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AUTHOR: 


FITZ-HUGH,  THOMAS 


TITLE: 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE 

HUMANITIES 

PLACE: 

CHICAGO 

DA  TE : 

1897 


Master  Negative  # 


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PRESERVATION  DEPARTMENT 


3lrS>o033>_:L± 


BIBLIOGRAPHIC  MICROFORM  TARGET 


Original  Material  as  Filmed  -  Existing  Bibliographic  Record 


r 


;  fHILOSOPIlY 

D877 
F57 


Restrictions  on  Use: 


Fitz-Hugh,  Thomas,  1862- 

The  philosophy  of  the  humanities,  by  Thomas  Fitz-Hugh  ... 
Chicago,  The  University  of  Chicago  press,  1897. 

6  p.  1.,  ^-63  p.    24«. 

**Three  addresses  reproduced  here  without  alteration." — Pref. 

Contents. — ^The  evolution  of  culture. — ^The  pedagogic  aspect  of  cul- 
ture-evolution:  organization  of  the  Latin  humanities  In  the  college. — 
Organization  of  the  Latin  humanities  In  secondary  education. 


1.  Classical  education. 


Library  of  Congress 


10—145 


LC1011.F5 
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THE 


PHILOSOPHY  OF 
THE  HUMANITIES 


BY 

THOMAS   FITZ-HUGH 

PROFESSOR  OF   LATIN    IN 
THE  UNIVERSITY  OF   TEXAS 


1 


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CHICAGO 

Zhc  TUntPcraiti?  of  Cbicaflo  press 

1897 


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THE 


COPYRIGHT  1898  BY 
THOMAS  FITZ-HUGH 


EVOLUTION  OF  CLASSIC   CULTURE 
AND   ITS   PEDAGOGIC   TREATMENT 


Y5T 


AN   INQUIRY  INTO  THE  PHILO- 
SOPHIC  BASIS  OF   THE   HUMANITIES 


I 


^  ^^ 


A 


THE 


COPYRIGHT  1898  BY 
THOMAS  FITZ-HUGH 


EVOLUTION  OF   CLASSIC   CULTURE 
AND   ITS   PEDAGOGIC   TREATMENT 


Y5T 


AN  INQUIRY  INTO  THE  PHILO- 
SOPHIC BASIS  OF   THE   HUMANITIES 


mmmmi'tmiili'f^m'!m'''f9mm^V 


I 


■*^^i^. 


THIS  LITTLE  BOOK  IS  DEDICATED  TO 
THE  CAUSE  OF  HUMANISTIC  STUDIES 
AND  TO  THEIR  PHILOSOPHIC  ORGAN- 
IZATION   IN    THE    LONE    STAR    STATE 


•ani 


CONTENTS. 


The  Evolution  of  Culture. 


II. 


The    Pedagogic   Aspect    of    Culture-Evolution:    Organ- 
ization OF  the  Latin  Humanities  in  the  College.         29 


III. 


Organization  of  the   Latin   Humanities  in  Secondary 

Education.  --------55 


mmm 


PREFACE. 


The  three  addresses  contained  in  this  volume  were  pre- 
pared on  separate  occasions  and  for  totally  different  bodies : 
hence  some  little  repetition  and  the  air  of  individual  isolation 
which  characterizes  them.  They  are  reproduced  here  without 
alteration. 


THE   EVOLUTION   OF   CULTURE 


I. 

THE  EVOLUTION  OF  CULTURE. 


Delivered  before  the  Texas  Academy  of  Science  in  December  of  1896. 


The  normal  evolution  of  Aryan  culture  presents  to  reflection 
five  successive  stages  —  the  hunting  and  fishing,  the  nomadic  or 
pastoral,  the  agricultural  or  political,  which  is  the  historical 
stage  par  excellence,  the  artistic  or  creative,  and  the  philosophic 
or  reflective  stage.  Our  knowledge  of  the  hunting  and  fishing 
and  of  the  nomadic  or  pastoral  period  is  derived  from  the  fos- 
silized objects  of  prehistoric  archaeology  and  the  fossilized 
words  and  thoughts  of  comparative  philology  and  comparative 
mythology,  and  confirmed  by  ordinary  reason  and  by  the  obser- 
vation of  primitive  types  of  contemporary  civilization.  But 
with  these  aids  we  have  reached  the  Ultima  Thule  of  pure  histor- 
ical insight :  the  sciences  of  man  can  carry  us  no  farther  back 
than  the  period  of  hunting  and  fishing.  Primeval  man  and  his 
relation  to  nature  and  through  nature  to  God  are  questions  left 
to  natural  science  and  religion.  And  yet,  constituted  as  the 
cultured  spirit  under  the  law  of  spiritual  survival  has  come  to 
be,  these  questions  as  to  the  meaning  for  man  of  nature  and 
God  are  the  chief  interests  of  humanity,  and  hence  from  our 
culture-historical  standpoint  we  are  justified  in  viewing  science 
and  religion  as  the  mainstays  of  our  hope  for  the  future. 

To  the  first  two  of  our  culture-historical  stages,  therefore, 
the  era  of  hunting  and  fishing,  and  the  era  of  nomadic  life,  only 
the  practical  interest  of  the  specialist  or  the  ideal  interest  of  the 
philosopher  attaches.  But  with  the  last  three,  the  social-politi- 
cal, the  artistic,  and  the  scientific  era,  cultured  humanity  identi- 
fies the  supreme  practical  and  ideal  interests  of  the  individual 
and  the  race.  The  social  foundation  with  its  organizing  factors, 
religion  and  law,  art  with  its  creations  of  glad  beauty,  science 
with  its  system  of  ever-widening  truth,  constitute  the  basal  inter- 

9 


lO 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  HUMANITIES 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  CULTURE 


II 


w 


ests  of  the  cultured  spirit,  for  they  embody  the  whole  content 
of  man's  spiritual  evolution,  and  they  present  the  successive 
phases  of  that  content  in  their  historical  and  organic  relation  ; 
they  constitute,  therefore,  the  true  humanities,  the  story  of  the 
unfolding  of  individual  as  well  as  racial  culture. 

Let  us  inquire  now  more  closely  into  that  unfolding :  we 
shall  find  one  supreme  factor  that  is  all-pervasive  in  civilization, 
and  we  shall  determine  the  order  and  process  of  its  operation 
in  the  evolution  of  culture. 

If  we  seek  the  ultimate  answer  to  the  question  what  seems 
to  be  the  determining  impulse  in  that  evolution,  it  is  found  in 
the  human  will.  The  most  momentous  and  epoch-making  fact 
in  modern  philosophy  is  the  union  of  history  and  biology,  of  the 
sciences,  par  excellence,  of  man  and  nature,  on  the  common 
ground  of  a  volitional  psychology  and  a  volitional  metaphysics : 
the  ultimate  inner  reality  of  man  and  nature,  so  far  as  it  seems 
empirically  presented  to  thought,  is  of  a  kind  with  the  thing  we 
call  will, —  it  is  will,  will  to  survive,  that  is  at  the  bottom  of  bio- 
logical as  of  historical  evolution.  If  we  seek,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  particular  culture-historical  factor  that  exerts  over  all  other 
stimuli  of  the  human  will  the  determining  influence  in  civiliza- 
tion, it  is  found  in  religion,  or  whatever  in  any  particular  case 
takes  its  place  as  embodying  the  highest  ideal  of  the  will.  For 
I  use  the  term  religion  in  its  true  Latin  meaning,  as  that  influ- 
ence which  binds  the  strong  springs  of  will  by  the  power  of  the 
supreme  ideal  which  it  holds  before  the  imagination  ;  the  power 
of  every  religion  is  the  power  of  its  ideal,  for  that  is  what  incites 
the  will. 

Now  it  is  not  every  religion  that  is  a  simple  religion  of  the 
divine  or  supernatural :  when  the  ideal  changes  from  the  elemen- 
tary form  of  a  vague  transcendental  sanction  to,  let  us  say,  the 
beautiful  as  in  Greece,  or  the  political  as  in  Rome,  the  empirical 
power  of  these  religions  in  the  evolution  of  culture  lies  in  the 
new  and  not  the  old  ideals ;  in  the  case  of  Greece,  for  example, 
we  might  speak  of  a  religion  of  beauty,  in  the  case  of  Rome,  of 
a  religion  of   patriotism.     The    original   common    mark   of    all 


religion,  however,  is  the  element  of  the  ultimate-ideal,  or  tran- 
scendental, and  it  is  this  element  which  the  national  will  invari- 
ably appropriates  when  the  particular  content  of  the  old  religion 
has  faded  before  the  vital  interests  of  the  new  ideal.  The  shell 
of  the  transcendental  sanction  accommodates  continually  a  chang- 
ing content  which  each  successive  era  naively  reads  into  the  tra- 
ditional religion.  Thus  religion,  embodying  everywhere  the 
supreme  ideal  of  the  individual  and  the  collective  will,  becomes 
inevitably  the  mainspring  of  the  highest  spiritual  activity,  which 
is  culture  itself :  it  will  urge  men  to  lay  the  social-political  sub- 
structure in  harmony  with  that  ideal,  it  will  inspire  artistic  genius 
to  glorify  its  worth  in  song  and  shrine  and  statue,  it  will  stimu- 
late and  exercise  the  imagination  and  suggest  the  first  bold  sal- 
lies of  discursive  thought. 

If  the  religious  ideal  is  thus  regnant  in  the  evolution  of  cul- 
ture, we  shall  not  be  surprised  to  find  it  fixing  the  character  and 
standard  of  culture-attainment.  The  achievements  of  an  individ- 
ual civilization,  as  the  Greek  or  the  Roman,  or  of  a  cycle  of  cul- 
ture like  the  Atlantic,  can  therefore  nowhere  transcend  the  level  of 
the  religious  ideal :  the  arrow  does  not  rise  above  the  line  of  aim, 
nor  has  the  individual  or  the  collective  will  ever  wrought  higher 
than  its  ideal.  The  achievements  of  culture  are  threefold  :  social, 
artistic,  and  scientific.  A  nation  the  essence  of  whose  religion 
is  the  ideal  of  state,  or  patriotism,  like  the  Roman's,  will  achieve 
its  best  culture-historical  results  in  the  sphere  of  that  ideal,  or 
the  social  political  sphere.  A  people  the  ideal  of  whose  religion 
is  the  beautiful,  like  the  Greek's,  will  realize  in  the  sphere  of  art 
its  highest  achievements.  A  culture-historical  cycle  like  that  of 
Atlantic  civilization,  whose  religious  ideal  is  spiritual  perfection, 
will  excel  in  all  the  fruits  of  spirit,  but  preeminently  in  the  pur- 
est, which  is  truth  or  science. 

If  we  come  now  to  consider  more  narrowly  the  nature  and 
origin  of  this  astonishing  transcendental  element  in  historical 
survival,  the  religious  ideal,  we  are  brought  face  to  face  with  the 
most  vital  distinction  involved  in  all  inquiry  into  the  unknown, 
the  distinction  between  the  empirical  reason  and  the  transcenden- 


12 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  HUMANITIES 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  CULTURE 


13 


^1 


II' 


tal  reason  ;  between  the  how  and  the  what  or  why  of  things.    As 
we  have  not  attempted  to  answer  the  transcendental  question  why 
life  is,  neither  have  we  sought  to  explain  why  religion,  with  its 
suggestions  of  the  beyond,  of  the  supernatural,  of  the  transcen- 
dental, should  appear  everywhere  in  history  to  lie  so  near  the 
springs  of  human  motive  and  so  arouse  the  hearts  of  men  to  toil 
by  deed  and  thought  towards  the  attainment  of  those  ideals  which, 
under  their  respective  environments,  have  approved  themselves 
in  the  battle  of  life  as  making  for  spiritual  survival  and  highest 
efficiency,  and  which  tend  everywhere  in  the  history  of  human 
life    to    become    invested    with    the  transcendental   sanction  of 
religion.     We  have  only  sought  to  find  how  the  religious  ideal 
operates   in  the  evolution   of  culture,   and   we   have  found  the 
empirical  reason  in  the  motive  power  of  the  ideal  upon  the  will. 
Our  laws  of  nature  and  history  do   not  explain  the  causes,  but 
only   the  process   of  phenomena.      Newton's   principle    of    uni- 
versal  attraction   does    not   explain  why  the  cosmic   system  so 
moves,   but  only  how  it  moves.     Physics   makes   no   claim  to 
solving  the  problem  why  energy  is  and  acts,  but  only  how  it  acts. 
Biology  does  not  concern   itself  with   the  question,  why  life  is, 
but  only  how  the  phenomena  of  life  succeed  each  other.     Scien- 
tific thought  restricts  its  responses  within  the   limits  of  real  or 
possible  experience ;  it  would  contradict  its  nature  to  dogmatize 
about   the   metempirical.     Whence,  then,  comes  the  answer  to 
the  transcendental  question,  which  is  the  characteristic  and  dis- 
tinguishing mark  of  the  human  spirit,  the  answer  to  which  makes 
up   the   dynamic   content  of    religion   and   determines    its  vital 
power  for  good  or  evil  in  culture  ?     In  metempirical  matters  it 
is  the  function  of  the   intellect  'to  answer  how,  of  the  will  to 
answer  why.     Reason  knows  how  the  thing  is,  the  will  decrees 
why  it  is.     Science  furnishes  the  empirical  cause,  religion  the 
transcendental.     All   that   reason  accepts  beyond  the  limits  of 
real  or  possible  experience  is  inevitably  a  mere  decree  of  the 
will,  a  choice  of  the  heart ;  and  that  decree,  that  choice,  rises 
spontaneously  out  of  the  total  experience  of  life  like  odor  from 
a   rose.      Reason   may  point   and  suggest,   but  the   heart  must 


decree  and  confirm.  It  was  the  heart  of  Anaxagoras  that, 
thrilling  with  the  beauty  and  order  of  the  world,  leapt  beyond  the 
data  of  science  and  found  the  transcendental  answer  in  a  world- 
ordering  Mind.  It  was  the  heart  of  Lucretius  that,  stricken  with 
the  sorrows  of  men  and  the  hideousness  of  their  superstitions, 

"  Dropped  his  plummet  down  the  broad, 
Deep  universe,  and  said,  '  No  God.'  " 

It  is  the  heart  of  cultured  humanity  that,  following  the  evo- 
lution of  culture  through  the  ages  until  now,  rises  above  the 
empirical  and  finds  the  sanction  for  the  power  of  the  ideal  and 
the  transcendental  upon  the  human  will  in  an  Infinite  Will,  "in 
whom  we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being."  It  is  the  heart 
of  the  materialist  that,  withered  by  the  cold  indifference  of 
nature's  mechanism,  declines  to  transgress  the  limits  of  possible 
experience  and  finds  the  mechanical  reason  in  Nature.  Out  of 
the  heart  are  the  issues  of  life. 

Of  critical  moment  in  the  evolution  of  culture  is  this  answer 
of  the  heart  to  the  what  and  why  of  things,  for  it  involves  the 
nature  of  the  supreme  ideal  and  the  worth  of  religion.  Even 
if  the  religion  of  matter  were  as  mysterious  and  transcendental 
as  the  religion  of  spirit,  there  could  not  be  serious  dispute  as  to 
their  relative  motive  force  in  the  concerns  of  culture.  The  mys- 
tery of  the  one  is  clothed  with  sacredness  and  worth,  the  mystery 
of  the  other  is  wrapped  in  the  ice  of  indifference.  The  very 
essence  of  the  religion  of  spirit  is  the  life  of  the  ideal  impulse, 
the  very  essence  of  the  religion  of  matter  is  indifference  to  that 
ideal.  History  strongly  suggests  the  inference  that  a  moribund 
religion  implies  a  moribund  civilization  ;  the  canker  that  destroyed 
the  civilizations  of  Greece  and  Rome  was  in  the  heart  of  religion. 
Tt  is  but  culture-historical  justice  that  the  world's  best  poetry 
and  philosophy  has  reprobated  the  materialistic  answer  to  the 
transcendental  question  as  being  unworthy  of  our  race ;  cf.  also 
Wundt,  System  der  Philosphie,  pages  3-4.  The  flowers  of  spirit 
wither  and  die  with  the  vine  that  gave  them  life.  It  is,  there- 
fore, a  profound  instinct  of  spiritual  selection  which  leads  society 


14 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  HUMANITIES 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  CULTURE 


15 


to  shudder  at  the  touch  of  atheism,  as  the  quick  shudders  at 
touch  of  the  dead.  Out  of  the  spiritual  ideal  are  the  issues  of 
culture. 

It  is  clear,  therefore,  that  the  transcendental  sanction  which 
religion  gives   is  the  important  and  determining  thing  for  cul- 
ture, and  that  it   is  not  religion's   function  to  give  any  other. 
And  yet,  in  the  nature  of  the  case,  every  historical  religion  has 
more  or  less  of  the  empirical  blended  with  its  structure.     This 
unavoidable  and  necessary  union  of  the  historical  with  the  super- 
natural has  been  the  disturbing  element  in  that  structure,  because 
of  the  tendency  of  the  transcendental  to   invest  the   historical 
and  empirical  with  its  own  sacredness  and  inviolability.     But  is 
not  the  ideal  sanction  the  characteristic  factor  that  concerns  the 
evolution  of  culture  and  determines  the  worth  of  religion  for 
humanity?     And   must    not   the   historical   tradition,   which    is 
wholly  empirical,  be  subject  to  the  test  of  historical  criticism  in 
order  that  the  precious  ideal  be  saved  from  the  polluting  union 
with  a  lie  ?     Since  religion  is  a  blending  of  the  empirical  and 
the  transcendental,  let  heart  and  head  do  each  its  perfect  work, 
aiding  but  not  dogmatizing  to   each  other,  and  all   heresy  and 
schism  and  hate  of  humanity's  best  friend  will  cease.     What  right 
has  the  heart  to  dogmatize  to  the  intellect  about  historical  facts  ? 
What  right  has  the  intellect  to  dogmatize  to  the  heart  about  the 
love  that  moves  them  both  to  work  their  noblest  works  ?    Surely, 
the  health  of  religion   lies   in  the  full,  free  development  of  its 
rational  and  ideal  elements  in  harmonious  and  spontaneous,  not 
in  hostile  and  forcible  reaction.     The  degree  of   this  harmony 
will  ever  be  the  measure  of  the  power  of  religion  in  culture- 
progress. 

Having  thus  established  the  supreme  importance  of  the 
religious  ideal  in  the  evolution  of  culture,  we  come  now  to 
consider  the  order  and  process  of  that  evolution.  When  man 
has  outlived  the  naturalistic  stages  of  the  hunting  and  fish- 
ing, and  the  nomadic  life,  and  enters  upon  the  proper  task  of 
culture,  the  problems  that  arise  are  the  practical  problems  of 
adaptation  to  his  geographical  and   spiritual  environment,  the 


conquest  of  the  soil  and  the  organization  of  private  and  public 
life.  The  first  stage  of  culture-historical  life  is,  therefore,  the 
social-political,  on  which,  as  a  practical  basis,  the  subsequent 
evolution  goes  forward.  When  economic  advance  has  been  suffi- 
.  cient  to  afford  leisure  and  means  for  ideal  pursuits,  the  human 
spirit  begins  at  once  to  unfold  itself  in  art,  and  the  second  stage 
in  the  history  of  culture,  the  era  of  the  beautiful,  is  inaugurated. 
At  length,  when  the  typical  forms  of  economic  and  artistic  activ- 
ity have  been  achieved,  the  spirit  of  inquiry  springs  into  new  and 
sudden  life,  and  the  pure  quest  of  truth  begins,  the  final  era  in 
the  unfolding  of  culture.  Thus  the  order  of  all  culture-evolu- 
tion is  economic,  artistic,  scientific,  as  suggested  in  my  opening 
sentence.  And  this,  too,  must  needs  be  the  order  of  individual 
evolution,  since  culture  is  the  work  of  individuals. 

Furthermore,  the  characteristic  activity  of  each  stage  does 
not  cease  with  the  inauguration  of  the  subsequent  stage,  but 
continues  for  all  time,  achieving  continually  higher  culture- 
historical  results.  Economic  activity  does  not,  of  course,  cease 
when  artistic  activity  begins,  and  both  of  them  flourish  in  the 
pure  air  of  science.  Hence  the  order  of  perfecting  may  even 
vary  from  the  order  of  beginning :  what  our  law  afifirms  is  the 
invariability  of  the  order  of  first  unfolding.  Agamemnon,  king 
of  men,  must  live  and  work  in  order  that  Homer,  the  sweet 
singer,  may  "touch  our  eyelids  with  tears,"  and  a  Homer  must 
stir  the  infinite  depths  of  spirit  before  Thales  of  Miletus  can 
inquire  into  the  mystery  of  the  universe.  A  Numa  must  inau- 
gurate his  policies  before  Ennius  can  have  leisure  to  sing,  and 
Ennius,  the  poet,  must  precede  Lucretius,  the  philosopher. 
Even  in  the  chaotic  beginnings  of  modern  culture,  a  Charle- 
magne or  a  Friedrich  Barbarossa  will  arise  before  a  Dante,  and 
a  Dante  before  a  Descartes. 

Our  next  inquiry  which  concerns  the  reason  for  this  seeming 
fixity  in  the  order  of  the  phenomena  of  higher  culture  presents 
no  difficulty  for  our  first  evolutionary  stage,  since  we  recognize 
in  the  agricultural,  social,  and  political  activities  of  that  stage 
the  necessary  basis  of  civilization.     Reason  does  not  question 


i6 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  HUMANITIES 


why  the  practical  era  of  society-building  normally  precedes  all 
other  manifestations  of  culture.  But  when  we  ask  why  the  crea- 
tion of  the  beautiful  in  art  is  characteristic  of  the  second  stage 
of  spiritual  evolution  and  the  quest  of  truth  in  science  of  the 
third,  the  answer  does  not  at  once  suggest  itself,  although  the 
fact  of  this  sequence  seems  apparent  not  only  in  the  history  of 
higher  culture,  but  in  the  more  rudimentary  phenomena  of  child- 
development  and  in  the  trend  of  aboriginal  and  savage  types  of 
civilization.  The  psychological  reason  seems  to  lie  in  the  dif- 
ference for  the  human  spirit  between  the  concrete  and  the 
abstract.  When  we  observe  that  the  whole  process  of  human 
evolution  presents  itself  to  us  both  in  history  and  biology  as  an 
unfolding  from  nature  into  spirit,  from  the  sensuous  into  the 
rational,  we  are  prepared  to  find  the  concrete  ideal  activity  in 
art  manifesting  itself  as  a  necessary  preparatory  stage  to  the 
abstract  ideal  activity  in  science.  The  era  of  art  is  the  midway 
stage  in  the  passage  of  the  human  spirit  from  concrete  activity 
to  abstract  activity ;  it  exhibits  the  concrete  element  of  the 
sensuous  and  the  abstract  element  of  the  ideal.  The  harmoni- 
ous union  of  the  two,  of  the  concrete  and  the  abstract,  of  nature 
and  thought,  is  what  we  mean  by  art.  The  scientific  era  elimi- 
nates the  sensuous  as  an  integral  constructive  element  in  its 
characteristic  activities,  and  thus  implies  a  higher  stage  of 
thought  evolution.  Hence  a  people  whose  impelling  interest  is 
concrete,  like  the  Romans,  does  not  rise  to  the  higher  spiritual 
activity  of  the  artistic  stage,  and  still  less  to  the  non-sensuous 
standpoint  of  the  scientific  era,  and  a  people  whose  impelling 
interest  is  the  beautiful,  like  the  Greeks,  while  achieving  the 
results  of  the  economic  stage  cannot  realize,  though  they  may 
approximate,  the  genuine  results  of  the  scientific,  for  their 
science  will  be  inevitably  contaminated  with  the  imaginative  and 
the  aesthetic;  cf.  also  Zeller,  Pre-Socratic  Philosophy,  I,  154  ff. 

Let  us  now  observe  more  in  detail  the  operation  of  this 
psychological  law,  in  accordance  with  which  human  culture 
manifests  itself  as  a  progress  from  concrete-activity  through  art- 
activity  into  scientific-activity.     The  characteristic  problems  of 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF   CULTURE 


17 


the  economic  stage  of  culture  are  concrete  problems  clamoring 
for  solution  in  order  to  the  satisfaction  of  social  and  political 
wants.  The  power  of  disinterested  abstract  thought  is  not 
involved,  since  thought  is  here  always  stimulated  by  practical 
interest,  but  at  the  same  time  the  foundation  is  being  laid  for 
the  next  higher  function  of  spirit  in  art-creation  where  thought 
while  cleaving  to  the  sensuous  has  nevertheless  emancipated 
itself  from  the  fetters  of  self-interest. 

When  the  necessary  conditions  of  social  life  have  been  ful-^ 
filled   and    a   period   of   leisure   and   affluence   ensues,   the   first 
advance  of  culture  must  needs  be,  as  we  have   seen,  into  the 
artistic    stage,    whose    products,    moreover,    by   their    sensuous 
beauty  appeal  more  immediately  to  the  fresh,  youthful  feelings 
of  those  who  have  emerged  triumphantly  from  the  difficulties  of 
the  economic  era,  and  whose  first  higher  spiritual  impulse  is  to 
realize  in  art  the   ideals  that  have  inspired  them.     The  height- 
ened vigor  which  accrues  to  the  imagination   in  the  first  flush 
of  the  artistic  life  of  a  people  redounds  on  the  one  hand  to  the 
economic    interest,    inasmuch  as  it  renders  finer  achievements 
possible  in  the  further  development  and  expansion  of  the  social- 
political  fabric,  and  on  the  other  to  the  scientific  interest,  inas- 
much as  the  exercise  of  the  sensuous  imagination  is  the  imme- 
diate and  necessary  preparation  for  the  activity  of  the  rational 
or  abstract  imagination,  which  is  the  essence  of  that  spiritual 
activity  we  call  scientific;  vid.  Zeller,  Pre-Socratie  Philosophy,  I, 
54.      The  moment  imagination  becomes    sufficiently  strong  to 
subject  its  own  content  to  critical  analysis,  the  phenomenon  of 
intellectual  doubt  arises,  which  is  the  necessary  starting-point  of 
scientific  thought.     The  scientific  or  reflective  era  dawns  when 
the   intellectual   presentation    begins   to    supplement  the  moral 
or   volitional   presentation   in    the   systematic   interpretation   of 
things ;  cf.  also  Wundt,  System  der  Philosophic,  p.  3. 

Having  discussed  the  fundamental  laws  regulating  the  evo- 
lution of  culture,  let  us  now  trace  more  explicitly  its  empirical 
process.  When  we  cast  our  glance  backward  to  the  farthest 
limits  of  historical  tradition,  two  factors  present  themselves  as 


i8 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  HUMANITIES 


If 

51 


of  prime  significance  in  the  life  and  progress  of  civilization,  the 
one  an  outer,  the  other  an  inner  influence.     These  factors  are 
geography  and   religion,   the    one    involving  the  physical,  the 
other  the  spiritual,  environment  of  the  community.     The  geo- 
graphical factor  furnishes  the  physical  basis  of  the  individual  and 
collective  life,  and  in  so  doing  exerts  a  powerful  reflex  influence 
upon  the  spiritual  trend  of  that  life.     When  we  come  to  inquire 
into  the  fundamental  traits  of  the  social  organism,  both  on  its 
domestic  and  on  its  political  side,  we  are  at  once   brought   face 
to   face    with   the    radical   influence   of   the   religious   ideal.     It 
appears  first  as  the  source  of  all  reverence  for  the  institution  of 
the  family,  and  finally  as  the  guarantee  of  the  sacredness  of  the 
state.     A  factor  that  thus  enters  with   determining  power   into 
the  foundations  of  the  social  order  must  needs  ramify  the  whole 
practical  life  and  history  of  the  race  :  it  is  preeminently  the  key 
to  that  life  and  history  ;  cf.  also  Hegel,  Philosophy  of  History,  p.  53. 

To  sum  up  our  results  for  the  first  historical  period  of  culture 

the  agricultural-political  or  the  historical  period  proper  — geog- 
raphy and  religion  are  the  fundamental  factors,  the  one  deter- 
mining the  physical  basis  of  society,  the  other  evolving  from 
itself  all  the  sanctities  of  private  and  public  life,  of  the  family 
and  the  state,  as  we  find  them  set  forth  in  the  private  and  public 
antiquities  of  every  historical  people. 

The  stage  of  state-building  through  the  establishing  of  cus- 
toms unwritten  and  written  is  fairly  inaugurated  and  the  second 
era  of  culture  dawns  in  the  lives  of  some  individuals ;  I  say,  of 
some  individuals,  because  the  advance  from  one  stage  of  culture 
to  another  is  in  the  last  analysis  a  fact  of  the  individual  experi- 
ence, and  will  occur  sooner  or  later  with  the  various  members  of 
the  social  order  as  the  life  of  the  individual  has  been  richer  or 
poorer  in  the  highest  experiences  of  the  race.  It  is  the  period 
of  the  love  of  the  beautiful  and  of  the  creation  of  its  noblest 
manifestations  ;  a  period  of  spiritual  freedom,  which  follows  upon 
the  organization  of  the  state  and  the  supplying  of  the  immediate 
demands  of  the  social  order,  and  which  implies,  therefore,  in 
certain  individuals  in  the  community  a  condition  of  leisure  and 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  CULTURE 


19 


\ 


I 


independence  of  fortune.  Here,  too,  when  we  inquire  into  the 
historical  beginnings  of  the  various  spheres  of  art,  the  same 
Ariadne  thread  of  the  religious  ideal  unites  the  maze  of  culture's 
pathway.  As  handmaidens  of  religion,  the  two  highest  arts, 
poetry  and  song,  hand  in  hand  usher  in  the  glad  morning  of  the 
beautiful.  And  when  religion  has  uttered  her  ideals  in  poetry 
and  song,  she  strikes  another  chord  in  the  diapason  of  beauty  — 
the  temple  rises  on  some  heaven-kissing  hill  as  a  worthy  house 
for  deity  :  the  majestic  beauty  of  architecture  is  born.  Then  sculp- 
ture seeks  to  realize  man's  thoughts  of  God  and  bodies  forth  the 
marble  form  of  deity,  and  painting  touches  shrine  and  statue 
with  the  charm  of  color.  Thus  art  everywhere  enters  history  as 
the  fair  vestal  at  religion's  altar. 

The  economic  and  creative  eras  have  unfolded  their  charac- 
teristic products,  and  the  spirit  of  man  is  ripe  for  the  era  of 
science,  which  appears  in  the  evolution  of  culture  as  rising  on  the 
basis  of  the  political  and  artistic  stages  and  as  having  its  roots 
like  them  in  the  soil  of  religion.  The  activity  of  the  scientific 
era  has  as  its  necessary  starting-point  the  data  of  the  religious 
imagination,  which  therefore  determines  the  direction  and 
powerfully  influences  the  results  of  the  earliest  scientific 
inquiry.  The  religious  presentation  is  the  source  of  the  first 
scientific  presentation,  for  the  religious  consciousness  involves 
the  notion  of  a  power  behind  the  phenomenal  world,  and  so 
suggests  to  reason  the  reign  of  law ;  cf.  Zeller,  Pre-Socratic 
Philosophy,  I,  51  f.  Thus  science  becomes  aware  of  her  whole 
problem  —  to  find  the  law  in  things.  Morever,  the  nature  of  the 
religious  presentation  is  found  to  determine  the  nature  of  the 
suggestion  to  reason.  A  religion  of  nature  and  beauty  like  the 
Greek's  will  suggest  a  naturalistic  philosophy  constructed  on 
aesthetic  rather  than  scientific  principles ;  a  religion  of  utility 
like  the  Roman's,  a  utilitarian  philosophy,  which  is  all  ethics  ; 
a  religion  of  spirit,  a  philosophy  of  spirit,  as  in  Christendom. 
And,  finally,  just  as  the  artistic  era  opens  with  the  most  spiritual 
form  of  art  —  poetry  and  song — as  the  most  perfect  expression 
of  its  impelling  ideals,  so  the  era  of  science  is  ushered  in  by  the 


20 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  HUMANITIES 


queen  of  sciences,  philosophy,  out  of  whose  broad  lap  the  sep- 
arate sciences  gradually  unfold  themselves,  leaving  to  the  mother 
the  queenly  task  of  maintaining  the  unity  and  concord  of  the 
household,  and  of  finding  a  supreme  truth  that  shall  harmonize 
the  ideals  of  religion  with  the  data  of  science. 

Surveying  now  the  course  of  culture-evolution  as  empirically 
presented  in  the  history  of  our  race,  it  is  impossible  to  ignore  the 
operation  and  development  of  what   may  be  termed  the  tran- 
scendental  sanction  as  a  vital  and   characteristic  element  in  the 
process   of  spiritual  selection   and  survival.     We  can  no  more 
ignore  the  determining  power  of  this  element  in  the  struggle  and 
rivalry  of  spiritual  evolution  than  we  can  any  other  principle  of 
organic   or   social   adaption   in   lower   stages    of   evolution.     At 
every  stage  of  culture-evolution  we  find  this  metempirical  sanc- 
tion   attaching    itself  with    greater   or   less  precision   to   every 
element  of  culture  that  seems  to  make  for  spiritual  survival  and 
efficiency,  and  converting  such  element  into  an  ideal  of  tremen- 
dous power. 

With  the  birth  of  science  the  relation  of  the  transcendental 
sanction  which  religion  exploits  in  the  evolution  of  culture  is 
naturally  at  first  disturbed:     There  are  two  ultimate  cravings  of 
the  human  spirit.     The  dominant  one  is  to  find  worth  in  things, 
the  secondary  to  find  truth  in  things.     Religion   is   the  product 
of  the  longings  of  the  heart,  science  of  the  longings  of  the  intel- 
lect.     But  until  the  rise  of  science  religion  had  to  discharge  the 
twofold  function  of  satisfying  heart  and  head,  and  only  after  a 
struggle,  the  din  of  whose  Armageddon  still   echoes  along  the 
paths  of  culture,  has  she  renounced  this  twofold  relation,  leaving 
to  science  the  theoretic,  and  restricting  herself  to  the  practical, 
function  in  civilization.     But  her  supremacy  still  asserts  itself  in 
unmistakable  character  in  the  demand  which  culture  makes  of 
science  in  the  person  of  philosophy  that  religion  and  science  be 
harmonized  in  a  contradictionless  unity. 

In  conclusion,  I  wish  to  emphasize  an  empirical  law  of 
supreme  practical  importance  in  culture,  and  I  can  devise  no 
more  satisfactory  term  for  it  than  the  law  of  habit.      I   mean  by 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  CULTURE 


21 


the  law  of  habit  a  tendency  to  organization  as  against  disorgan- 
ization, to  cosmos  as  against  chaos,  under  the  higher  law  of  life, 
progress  by  spiritual  selection  and  survival.  The  question  I  now 
propose  is  again  the  how,  the  law,  not  the  why,  the  cause,  of 
this  tendency  in  the  spiritual  world. 

The  subject  of  culture-historical  inquiry  is  the  spirit  of  man. 
By  spirit  I  mean  always  the  whole  willing,  feeling,  and  thinking 
being.  Culture  is  the  work  of  that  spirit  under  the  impulse  of 
stimuli  of  the  will.  These  stimuli  of  the  will  are  what  we  mean 
by  ideals.  What  the  human  spirit  most  wants  or  wills  becomes 
by  definition  the  ideal  of  the  will.  Now  just  here  our  empirical 
question  arises  :  how  does  the  individual  and  the  community 
come  to  want  or  will  any  particular  ideal  of  culture  ?  We  answer 
at  once,  through  the  sum  total  of  experience,  hereditary  and 
personal,  physical  and  spiritual.  But  how  does  experience  go 
about  creating  these  wants,  these  longings,  these  ideals  of  the 
will  ?  I  find  only  one  answer  :  by  the  most  vital  empirical  law 
in  the  world  of  life,  by  the  law  of  habit,  which  I  have  tried  to 
define  more  exactly  as  a  tendency  to  organization  as  against 
disorganization,  to  cosmos  as  against  chaos.  What  gravity  is  in 
the  so-called  inanimate  cosmos,  habit  is  in  the  animate  world. 
Just  as  the  nebular  tends  to  cosmic  organization  by  the  way  of 
gravity,  so  the  animate  tends  to  biologic  organization  by  the  way 
of  habit.  I  repeat,  I  raise  no  transcendental  issue.  The  ques- 
tion, what  is  the  reason  for  the  biological  law  of  habit  is  tanta- 
mount to  the  question,  what  is  the  reason  for  the  physical  law 
of  gravity  ?  The  question  why  nebular  matter  develops  a  ten- 
dency to  organization  or  cosmos  is  tantamount  to  the  question 
why  the  human  spirit  develops  a  tendency  to  culture.  Science 
has  never  yet  successfully  answered  these  questions.  Their 
answer  has  thus  far  been  ever  a  fiat  of  the  human  will,  a  revela- 
tion of  the  human  heart.  I  mean  only  to  emphasize  the  empir- 
ical fact  that  the  universe  of  matter  and  mind  does  actually 
develop  this  tendency  to  beauty,  on  the  one  hand  by  the  way  of 
gravity,  on  the  other  by  the  way  of  habit.  Gravitation,  then,  in 
matter  and  habitual  experience,  or  habit  through  experience,  in 


22 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  HUMANITIES 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  CULTURE 


23 


ll 


IjJ 


life  are  God's  modes  of  astronomic  and  biological  evolution. 
Gravitation  develops  astronomical  cosmos,  and  habit  biological 
cosmos.  Gravity  is  the  law  of  astronomical  organization,  and 
habit  the  law  of  biological  organization. 

The  sum-total  of  our  experience,  then,  under  the  law  of  habit, 
or  tendency  to   organization,  conditions  all  our  concrete  willing 
and  feeling  and  thinking;  in  other  words,  all  spiritual  activity 
and  hence  all  culture  is  the  result  of  this  tendency  of  spirit  under 
the  law  of  progress,  which  seems  to  hold  in  history  as  in  biology, 
to  convert  disorganization  into  organization,  chaos  into  cosmos' 
by  the  way  of  habit.     The  power  of  experience  expresses  itself 
m   Its  tendency   to    habituate.      Experience,    become    habitual, 
tends  more  and  more  to  become  a  law.     Habitual  experience  of 
climate  becomes  a  climatic  need.     Habitual  experience  of  social 
and  political  conditions  converts  those  conditions  into  laws  of 
life  for  individual  and  community.     Habitual  experience  of  the 
beautiful   makes   art  a  second  nature.      Habitual  experience  of 
science  becomes  a  permanent  motive  of  intellectual  activity. 

The  permanence  of  culture,  then,  in  obedience  to  the  law  of 
habit,  depends  upon  habitual  experience  of  its  ideals.     So  long 
as  those  ideals  are  becoming  spiritual  habits  through  systematic 
cultivation   at  the  hands  of  the   individual,  the  family,  and  the 
community,  so  long  will  the  true,  beautiful,  and  good  be  ruling 
impulses  in  life.     When  that  sacred  cult  falls  into  partial  or  total 
desuetude,  culture  by  the  divinely  imposed  law  of  habit  is  par- 
tially or  wholly  dead.     What  a  responsibility  then  is  ours,  who,  as 
truth-seekers,  are  protagonists   in  the  vanguard  of  civilization  ! 
If  noble,  social  ideals  are  to  rule,  must  we  not  toil  to  habituate 
our  fellowmen,  and  especially  the  young,  to  the  experience  of 
them  ?     If  a  government  worthy  of  spiritual  freemen  is  to  sur- 
Vive,  must  not  its  vital  interests  and  aims  be  made  familiar  and 
habitual  to  our  children  and  our  neighbors  ?     If  the  joy  of  art 
is  to  live,  must  we  not,  by  habitual   contact,  drink   in   its   pure 
inspiration  ?     If  the   truth  of  science  is  to   wax,  must  we  not 
make  it  the  habitual  goal  of  our  thinking  ? 

My  theory   of    culture-evolution  is    completely,   though    of 


necessity  briefly,  stated.  I  desire  to  append  to  it  two  philo- 
sophic inferences  which  it  seems  to  involve.  The  first  concerns 
the  empirical  biologic  basis  of  science,  the  second  the  metempir- 
ical  basis  of  religion.  The  evolution  of  culture  stands,  of  course, 
in  immediate  connection  with  universal  evolution.  Culture-evo- 
lution, viewed  empirically,  is  merely  the  third  step  in  universal 
evolution.  Science  recognizes,  first,  an  astronomic  evolution, 
next,  a  biologic  evolution,  and  lastly,  a  culture  evolution.  Cul- 
ture evolution  is  simply  the  crown  of  the  biological  process  ; 
the  highest  form  of  life  is  the  cultured  spirit.  The  empirical 
fact  that  unites  all  forms  of  biological  evolution  is  the  fact  of  a 
tendency  to  organization,  a  conception  arising  in  the  biological 
sphere,  and  applied  figuratively  or  interpretatively  to  the  astro- 
nomical process.  I  say  figuratively  or  interpretatively,  for  sci- 
ence cannot,  without  an  assumption,  speak  of  a  tendency  to  organ- 
ization as  an  empirical  fact,  except  for  the  world  of  life,  because 
consciousness  alone  can  cognize  that  fact  of  itself  ;  conscious 
life  cognizes  its  own  tendency  to  organization  as  an  empirical 
fact.  Science  can  go  no  farther  than  to  posit  this  tendency  as 
probably  inherent  likewise  in  all  extra-conscious  phenomena  of 
life,  being  compelled,  even  here,  to  ignore  the  factor  of  conscious- 
ness, although  it  is  in  conscious  life  alone  that  we  have  imme- 
diate experience  of  the  tendency. 

Apart,  therefore,  from  the  problem  of'astronomical  evolution, 
let  us  consider  the  biological  significance  of  the  empirical  fact 
of  this  conscious  tendency  to  organization.  That  significance 
will  be  found  to  consist  in  the  determination  of  the  ultimate 
scientific  basis,  or  the  empirical  starting-point,  of  biological 
evolution,  as  a  cosmic  and  not  an  acosmic  condition.  In  any 
ultimate  empirical  basis  of  biological  evolution  science  must  pre- 
suppose the  tendency  to  organization  because  the  present  known 
biological  world  exhibits  at  least  in  conscious  spirit  a  certain 
degree  of  this  tendency.  Furthermore,  science  must  admit  as  a 
possible  element  in  that  ultimate  empirical  basis  a  non-tendency 
to  organization  because  in  our  present  known  biological  status 
this  non-tendency  exists  at  least  in  conscious  spirit  as  the  empir- 


24 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  HUMANITIES 


ical   correlate  of  the  conscious  tendency.     We  cannot  assume 
this  non-tendency  at  any  particular  point  of  previous  biological 
evolution,  because  such  elements  may  be  rationally  viewed  as  a 
sort  of  dead-waste  of  organization  and  therefore  as  an  integral 
part  of  organization,  though  set  off    in  consciousness  as  non- 
organization  because  not  empirically  participant  in  organization. 
But  neither  can  we  disprove  and  repudiate  this  non-tendency  as 
an  element  in  our  possible  biological  basis,  because  on  empirical 
grounds  it  may  have  as  good  right  to  be   as   the  tendency  to 
organization.      Furthermore,  thought  must  assert  the  primacy  of 
the  element  of  organization  in  the  sense  that  the  non-tendency 
must  be  viewed  as  incidental  to  the  tendency,  and  not  the  ten- 
dency to  organization  as  incidental  to  inertia  or  chaos.    Thought 
cannot  view  organization  as  the  dead-waste  of  non-organization, 
cosmos  as  a  side  issue  to  chaos,  just  as  it  cannot  think  purpose 
a  function  of  indifference,  order  a  function  of  confusion,  life  a 
•  function  of  death.     On  the  contrary,  experience  of  thought  and 
life  seems  to  justify  the  position  that  the  tendency  to  biological 
organization  which  we  call   life   has  this  advantage   over  non- 
tendency,  that  it  waxes  in  power  and  tends  to  invade  the  realm 
of  non-tendency  and  win  it  over  to  organization  in  cell  and  plant 
and  animal.     But  an  acosmic  empirical  basis  of  life  that  must 
develop  into  a  cosmic  one  is  an  impossible  conception  for  science. 
Therefore,  in  view  of  this  empirical  fact  of  the  divine  tendency 
to  biological  organization,  as  cognized  in  consciousness,  science 
must  posit  as  its  ultimate  biological  basis  a  cosmos  in  ovo,  and 
it  must  repudiate  as  unscientfic  all  conceptions  of  a  chaotic  or 
"chance"  biological  condition. 

I  shall  not  raise  the  analogous  question  with  reference  to  the 
astronomical  world,  because  our  whole  inquiry  is  confined  to 
phenomena  of  life.  Although  science  assumes  the  biological 
world  as  arising  on  the  basis  of  the  astronomical,  she  has  not 
yet  succeeded  in  showing  either  life  to  be  an  astronomical,  or 
motion  to  be  a  biological,  phenomenon.  Until  this  is  achieved  the 
relation  of  thought  to  the  astronomical  process  will  continue 
fundamentally  different  from  its  relation  to  the  biological  process. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  CULTURE 


25 


Thought  contemplates  the  biological  process  from  within,  because 
it  is  itself  a  function  of  that  process,  but  thought's  relation  to 
non-life  remains  persistently  an  outer  relation,  in  accordance  with 
which  thought  can  only  interpret  non-life  in  terms  of  life,  and 
must  therefore  waive  the  scientific  cogency  of  all  conclusions 
about  non-life  and  even  of  extra-conscious  life  that  are  based  upon 
life's  experience  of  itself.  Hence,  while  the  analogy  between 
biological  evolution  and  astronomical  evolution  is  very  near,  we 
could  not  make  it  more  than  an  analogy  without  assuming,  in  the 
first  place,  the  existence  of  a  tendency  in  non-life,  which  we 
know  only  for  life,  and,  in  the  second  place,  even  admitting  a 
tendency  to  cosmos  in  non-life,  that  the  empirical  biological  fact 
of  consciousness  that  organizing  tendencies  prevail  against  non- 
organizing  tendencies  is  likewise  an  empirical  astronomical  fact, 

which  we  cannot  assert.     In  a  word,  to  make  our  argument  for 

a  cosmic  biologic  basis  cogent  for  a  cosmic  astronomical  basis 
we  must  practically  assume  what  we  posit  as  non-life  to  be  one 
with  life.  Thought  will  continue  to  interpret  the  phenomena  of 
astronomical  evolution  in  terms  of  those  of  biological  evolution, 
but  science  will  deny  anything  but  the  analogy  until  thought 
itself  is  shown  to  be  a  mode  of  motion,  or  energy  a  mode  of  life. 
But  not  only  does  the  fact  of  this  biological  tendency  to 
cosmos  determine  for  science  the  empirical  basis  of  life;  it 
determines  and  explains  for  religion  the  metempirical  ideal.  The 
ideal  of  human  faith  while  beyond  empirical  thought  may  not 
clash  with  empirical  thought,  for  both  religion  and  science  are 
phenomena  of  one  life.  The  same  law  of  that  life  in  accord  with 
which  science  posits  a  cosmic  empirical  basis  for  that  life  will 
determine  for  faith  a  cosmic  metempirical  basis  of  the  nature  of 
organizing  spirit,  for  organizing  spirit  is  the  noblest  manifestation 
of  that  life.  While  reason  cannot  arrive  at  a  first  cause,  because 
the  rational  quest  of  a  first  cause  involves  reason  in  the  hopeless 
regress  of  antecedents,  yet  the  history  of  humanity  and  the 
experience  of  the  individual  show  that  reason  rests  naively  in  a 
first  cause  of  the  nature  of  spirit.  The  explanation  is  that  such 
an  ideal,  though  unattainable  by  empirical  thought,  is  sympathetic 


26 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  HUMANITIES 


\ 


with  empirical  thought,  while  the  non-spiritual  principle,  even 
though  hke  the  atoms  of  Democritus,  simple  and  satisfactory 
as  a  process,  falls  as  a  first  cause  under  the  ban  of  reason  and 
the  infinite  regress,  because  thought  refuses  to  rest  naively  in  a 
first  cause  that  ignores  life  and  its  highest  manifestation,  human 
spirit.  Hence  it  is  that  as  culture  advances  to  the  reflective  stage 
the  transcendental  sanction  tends  more  and  more  to  express 
Itself  in  a  religion  of  Organizing  Spirit,  in  which  the  cultured 
mmd  realizes  the  maximum  reconciliation  between  knowledge 
and  faith.  -  ^ 

Let  us  now  sum  up  our  results.      From  the  general   interpre- 
tative standpoint  of  a  volitional  metaphysics,  the  evolution  of 
culture  has  been  presented  as  an  invariable  series  of  phenomena 
evolving,  in  obedience  to  psychological   law,  under  the  impulse 
of  physical  and  spiritual  stimuli,  which  find  their  most  typical 
conceptual   expression   in   the    terms    geography   and    religion 
Under  the  primitive  indirect   influence  of  physical  environment 
and  the  subsequent   direct  influence  of  spiritual  aspiration  after 
worth  in  life  and  truth  in  things,  the  three  successive  stages  of 
culture-achievement,  the  social-political,  the    artistic  or    imagi- 
native, and  the  philosophic  or  reflective  stage,  unfold  themselves 
m  the  order  of  psychological  process.     The  tendency  to  spiritual 
organization  effectuates  itself  empirically  by  the  way  of  habit 
which  IS  the  empirical  mode  of  the  operation  of  experience    The 
consciousness    of    this  tendency,  which    is    given    in    thought 
involves  for  thought  the  scientific  repudiation  of  a  "chance"  or 
acosmic  biological   standpoint  or  starting-point,  whether  empir- 
ical as  in  science  or  metempirical  as  in  religion. 


THE  PEDAGOGIC  ASPECT 
OF  CULTURE-EVOLUTION 


fM 


ii 


II 


II. 

THE  PEDAGOGIC  ASPECT  OF  CULTURE-EVOLUTION  : 
ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  LATIN  HUMANITIES 

IN  THE  COLLEGE. 


Delivered  before  the  University  of  Texas  in  February  of  1897. 


When  thought  addresses  itself  either  to  the  world  of  life  or 
to  the  astronomical-physical  world,  the  thing  that  appears  con- 
spicuously as  a  common  trait  of  both  is  a  principle  of  organiza- 
tion, which  manifests  itself  in  the  highest  form  of  reality,  the 
human  spirit,  as  a  natural  tendency  to  culture,  —  that  is,  to 
economic,  artistic,  and  scientific  organization.  Consciousness 
recognizes  the  will  as  the  motive  power  behind  this  tendency  to 
spiritual  organization,  and  thought,  interpreting  the  outer  world 
of  life  and  non-life  in  terms  of  the  Ego,  points  the  way  to  a 
volitional  metaphysics.  For  to  some  first  principle  we  must 
come,  since  that  primal  will  within  us  demands  and  ultimately 
decrees  it  and  thought  continually  approaches  it.  Nothing  is 
truer  than  that  the  heart  and  mind  thirst  to  rest  in  God.  And 
herein  we  recognize  the  ultimate  mystery  in  higher  culture, — 
this  spiritual  longing  for  the  good,  the  beautiful,  and  the  true; 
and  herein  the  ultimate  power  of  the  cultured  will, —  to  tran- 
scend experience  in  the  construction  of  its  own  ideals  and  so  to 
anticipate  in  thought  the  haven  where  it  would  be.  These  basal 
longings  of  the  human  heart,  the  strange  children  of  the  strug- 
gles and  rivalries  of  existence  with  its  divinely  imposed  law  of 
survival  by  progress  and  selection,  or  by  whatever  other  empir- 
ical process  science  may  interpret  to  itself  the  course  of  spiritual 
evolution,  take  shape  in  religion,  by  which  we  mean  the  con- 
straining power  of  these  ideals  of  the  will  upon  the  work  and 
thought  of  men.  Religion  we  find  everywhere  answering  the 
highest  cravings  of  the  human  spirit,  those  that  condition  and 
determine   all  others,   the   craving   for  ultimate,  unconditioned 

29 


30 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  HUMANITIES 


PEDAGOGIC  ASPECT  OF  CULTURE  EVOLUTION 


31 


I 


II 


I 


worth,   and  the    craving   for  ultimate,  unconditioned    truth,   the 
supreme  wants  of  heart  and  head.   Its  ideal  is  therefore  supreme 
in  culture  because  as  the   ultimate  sanction   it  gives   value  and 
significance  to  all  the  higher  aspirations  and   activities   of   life. 
These  ideal  interests  and  aspirations  of  the  mdividual  and  the 
collective  will  become  instinctively  incorporated  with  the  super- 
natural in    religion,   in  which,  therefore,  the  process   of   culture 
from  the  period  of  social-political  organization  throughout  each 
subsequent  stage  of  its  evolution,  its  era  of  artistic  activity  and 
its  era  of  philosophic  activity,  is  strongly  rooted.      Hence  it  is 
that  as  the  religious  ideal  becomes  purer  and  higher  it  imparts  a 
like  character  to  the  ideals  of  culture,  and  as  it  declines  under  the 
influence  of  satiety,  excessive  luxury,  or  other  cause  of  spiritual 
stagnation,  then  government,  art,  and  science   decline  with   it; 
for  that  from  which  the   ultimate  sanction  springs  for  the  worth 
of  the  state,  of  art,  and  of  science,  that  whence  comes  all  worth 
to  life,  must  needs  involve  life  and  culture  in  its  own  decay. 

It  is  important  at  the  outset  to  emphasize  the  purely  empir- 
ical meaning  and  verifiability  of  these  and  all  similar  statements 
about  religion,  and  furthermore  to  remind  the  reader  that  refer- 
ence is  only  intended  to  that  segment  of  culture-evolution  which 
is  already  achieved.  Our  gaze  is  directed  upon  man  in  history, 
not  upon  the  possible  future  of  culture;  and  our  inquiry  is 
purely  empirical,  not  even  speculative  and  in  no  sense  idealizing. 
In  every  essential  statement  appeal  is  made  to  the  world  of 
experience. 

The  earliest  twilight  dawn  of  culture  in  the  prehistoric  period 
of  the  cave-dwellers  shows  the  birth  of  art  under  the  inspiration 
of  the  sense  of  the  supernatural.  The  lancehead  carved  with  the 
mammoth,  the  harpoon-fang  ornamented  with  a  fish,  seem  to 
have  become  supernatural  weapons  in  the  thought  of  these  people 
of  the  old  stone  age;  cf,  Keary,  Dawn  of  History,  p.  20.  If  the 
stimulus  of  these  dim,  transcendental  notions  that  do  not  rise 
above  the  dignity  of  fetichism  was  so  effective  in  the  life  of  the 
cave-man  as  to  produce  a  style  of  art-carving  that  excites  the 
wonder  of  archaeologists,  we  are  prepared  to  find  in  the  neolithic 


era,  where  a  nobler  view  of  life  and  the  other  world  expresses 
itself  in  grander  types  of  art,  the  mighty  tumuli  of  their  heroes 
and  the  stately  cromlechs  of  their  gods.  These  vast  structures 
belong  to  the  first  era  of  consecutive  human  tradition,  the 
neolithic  age,  for  the  men  of  the  old  stone  age  are  cut  off  from 
us  by  a  period  of  unknown  duration  and  voiceless  silence.  But 
here  when  the  race  reappears  we  trace  over  the  entire  globe 
what  seems  to  be  the  indestructible  relics  of  its  tendency  and 
power  to  revere,  and  thus  at  this  prehistoric  period  the  religious 
and  transcendental  ideal  is  the  inspiration  of  all  that  has  perpetu- 
ated the  memory  of  these  remarkable  Turanian  forerunners  of 
Mediterranean  culture. 

We  are  not  suprised,*  therefore,  that  as  we  enter  upon  the 
pathway  of  literary  tradition  we  find  ourselves  everywhere 
ushered  through  the  sacred  portals  of  religion  into  the  very 
heart  of  the  social  and  political  economy,  the  art,  and  the 
science  of  mankind.  Everywhere  it  is  this  power  of  the  soul  to 
revere  that  lifts  humanity  into  the  godlike  way  of  culture,  where 
springs  into  being  all  that  ennobles  life,  and  suggests  the 
divinity  of  our  race ;  and  everywhere  in  history  it  is  with  this 
key  that  we  open  the  door  to  a  knowledge  of  the  inner  processes 
of  culture  in  society,  in  art,  and  in  scientific  activity. 

The  earliest  historical  art  on  the  walls  of  Egyptian  tombs, 
like  the  art  of  the  cave-man,  seems  to  have  been  inspired  by  a 
faith  in  the  supernatural  meaning  and  efificacy  of  such  imitative 
portrayals,  for  thus  the  double  of  the  dead  man  enjoyed  in  the 
tomb  the  doubles  of  his  earthly  possessions  and  experiences. 
And  again  in  her  monumental  forms  aged  Egypt  takes  up  the 
thread  of  prehistoric  art  and  shows  us  the  simple  grave-mound 
and  dolmen-circles  of  the  mighty  Turanian  brotherhood  devel- 
oped now  under  the  same  spiritual  influence  into  the  Egyptian 
pyramid  and  temple;  cf.  Keary,  Dawn  of  History,  p.  53. 

But  here  in  Egypt  we  emerge  from  the  twilight  of  unrecorded 
history  and  for  the  first  time  are  enabled  to  survey  the  entire 
scope  of  the  religious  ideal  in  human  life,  for  only  implements 
of  handiwork  and  products  of  formative  art  are  independent  of 


'"»n.''i.»mi»iiii»''iraaMj 


i  fi 


32 


T//£  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  HUMANITIES 


il||< 


literary  tradition.      On  the  other  hand,  customs  and  laws,  music 
and  song,  philosophy  and  science,  must  be  caught  up  for  us  in 
the  written  symbol,  or  they  are  forever  lost  to  history  along  with 
all  knowledge  of  the  influences  that  fostered  them.     With  the 
Egyptian  civilization  dawns  the  continuous  life  of  Mediterranean 
culture.     Theodore  Mommsen  begins  his  great  history  of  Rome 
with  these   words :     "  The    Mediterranean    Sea  with   its   various 
branches,   penetrating  far  into  the   great   continent,   forms   the 
largest  gulf  of  the  ocean,  and  alternately  narrowed  by  islands  or 
projections  of  the  land  and  expanding  to  considerable  breadth, 
at  once  separates  and  connects   the  three   divisions  of  the  Old 
World.     The   shores   of  this   inland  sea  were   in   ancient  times 
peopled   by  various   nations   belonging   from   an  ethnographical 
and  philological  point  of  view  to  different  races,  but  constituting 
in   their  historical   aspect  one  whole.     This  historic  whole  has 
been  usually,  but  not  very  appropriately,  entitled  the  history  of 
the  ancient  world.     It   is  in    reality  the   history  of   civilization 
among  the  Mediterranean  nations  ;  and,  as  it  passes  before  us  in 
its  successive  stages,  it  presents   four  great    phases   of   develop- 
ment,—  the  history  of  the   Coptic  or  Egyptian  stock    dwelling 
on  the  southern  shore,  the   history  of  the   Aramaean  or  Syrian 
nation   which    occupied  the  east  coast   and   extended   into  the 
interior  of  Asia  as  far  as  the  Euphrates  and  Tigris,  and  the  his- 
tories of  the  twin-peoples,  the  Hellenes  and  Italians,  who  received 
as  their  heritage  the  countries  on  the  European  shore.     Each  of 
these  histories  was  in  its  earlier  stages  connected  with  other  regions 
and  with   other  cycles  of   historical    evolution;  but  each  soon 
entered  on  its  own  distinctive  career.     The  surrounding  nations 
of  alien  or  even  of  kindred  extraction  —  the  Berbers  and  Negroes 
of  Africa,  the  Arabs,  Persians,  and   Indians   of  Asia,   the   Celts 
and  Germans  of  Europe  —  came  into  manifold  contact  with   the 
peoples  inhabiting  the  borders  of  the  Mediterranean,  but  they 
neither  imparted  unto  them  nor  received  from   them   any  influ- 
ences exercising  decisive  effect  on  their  respective  destinies.     So 
far,  therefore,  as  cycles  of  culture  admit  of  demarcation  at  all, 
the  cycle  which  has  its  culminating  points  denoted  by  the  names, 


•it 


PEDAGOGIC  ASPECT  OF  CULTURE  EVOLUTION 


33 


Thebes,  Carthage,  Athens,  and  Rome,  may  be  regarded  as  an  unity. 
The  four  nations  represented  by  these  names,  after  each  of  them 
had  attained  in  a  path  of  its  own  a  peculiar  and  noble  civiliza- 
tion, mingled  with  one  another  in  the  m(5st  varied  relations 
of  reciprocal  intercourse,  and  skillfully  elaborated,  and  richly 
developed  all  the  elements  of  human  nature.  At  length  their 
cycle  was  accomplished.  New  peoples,  who  hitherto  had  only 
laved  the  territories  of  the  states  of  the  Mediterranean  as  waves 
lave  the  beach,  overflowed  both  its  shores,  severed  the  history 
of  its  south  coast  from  that  of  the  north  and  transferred  the 
center  of  civilization  from  the  Mediterranean  to  the  Atlantic 
Ocean.  The  distinction  between  ancient  and  modern  history, 
therefore,  is  no  mere  accident,  nor  yet  a  mere  matter  of  chron- 
ological convenience.  What  is  called  modern  history  is  in 
reality  the  formation  of  a  new  cycle  of  culture,  connected  in 
several  stages  of  its  development  with  the  perishing  or  perished 
civilization  of  the  Mediterranean  states,  as  this  was  connected 
with  the  primitive  civilization  of  the  Indo-Germanic  stock,  but 
destined,  like  the  earlier  cycle,  to  traverse  an  orbit  of  its  own. 
It,  too,  is  destined  to  experience  in  full  measure  the  vicissitudes 
of  national  weal  and  woe,  the  periods  of  growth,  of  maturity, 
and  of  age,  the  blessedness  of  creative  effort  in  religion,  polity, 
and  art,  the  comfort  of  enjoying  the  material  and  intellectual 
acquisitions  which  it  has  won,  perhaps  also,  some  day,  the  decay 
of  productive  power  in  the  satiety  of  contentment  with  the  goal 
attained.  And  yet  this  goal  will  only  be  temporary  :  the  grand- 
est system  of  civilization  has  its  orbit  and  may  complete  its 
course  ;  but  not  so  the  human  race,  to  which,  just  when  it  seems 
to  have  reached  its  goal,  the  old  task  is  ever  set  anew  with  a 
wider  range  and  with  a  deeper  meaning." 

The  old  task  of  which  Mommsen  speaks  is  the  task  of  higher 
culture.  The  three  successive  stages  in  its  fulfillment  are  society, 
art,  and  science,  and  its  regnant  inspiration  has  ever  been  the 
idealizing  human  will,  with  its  God-given  reverence  for  what  it 
believed  to  be  the  good,  the  beautiful,  and  the  true.  This  is 
everywhere  the  lesson  of  history.     Examine  the  significance  of 


34 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  HUMANITIES 


PEDAGOGIC  ASPECT  OF  CULTURE  EVOLUTION 


35 


ffi 


Osiris  and   Isis   in  Coptic   civilization,  and  of  the  entire  trans- 
cendental hierarchy  in  Aramaean  culture,  and  the  religious  ideal 
will  be  found  basal  to  the  institutions,  the  art,  and  the  science  of 
Egypt  and  Western^ Asia.      Notably  in  the  rounded  civilization 
of  Greece  is  the  religious  ideal  conspicuous  and  the  three  culture 
forms  in  which  it  successively  realizes  itself  apparent.     Olympian 
Zeus  and  Delphic  Apollo  are  the  soul  of  all  that  is  characteristic 
of  Greek  culture.     They  rule  in   the   institutions  of  private  and 
public  life,  their  spirit  lives  in  the  poetry  of  Homer  and  the  art 
of    Pheidias,  and  utters   itself  in  the  philosophy  of  a  Socrates,  a 
Plato,  and  an  Aristotle.      The  evolution  of  ancient  culture  pre- 
sents itself  to  us  everywhere  in  three  successive  steps,  economic, 
artistic,  and  reflective,  and  each  successive  stage  of  that  culture- 
historical  cycle  exhibits  the  power  of  the  religious  ideal,  first  in 
the  organization  of  society,  next  in  the  forms  of  art,  and  lastly 
in  the  trend  of  philosophy  and  science.     Such  is  the  lesson  of 
Egyptian,  Aramaean,  Greek,  and  Roman  civilization  alike. 

It  is  left   to   those    conversant  with    the   trend   of  the  indi- 
vidual  national   cultures   of  the  Atlantic   cycle    to   observe   the 
applicability  of    this   law  in   detail   to   the  more   complex  phe- 
nomena of  modern  history.     And  yet  striking  analogies  present 
themselves   immediately  even   to  the   lay-student  of  European 
civilization  subsequent  to  the  fall  of  the  ancient  regime,  when 
practically  the  world  begins  anew  the  old  task  of  culture.      Here 
our  fundamental  factor  is  the  religion  of  Christ.     The  first  stage 
is  the  building  of  the  social   and  political  fabric.      In  the  con- 
struction of  the  new  social  regime  the  religious  point  of  view  is 
dominant,  in  the  construction  of  the  political  regime  the  key- 
note is  the  doctrine  of  Christ,   "  Render  unto  Caesar  the  things 
that  are  Caesar's,"  which  is  realized  in  the  blending  of  Roman 
jurisprudence   with    the    hitherto    unwritten    laws    of  Germanic 
Christendom.     The   social   and    political    foundation   under   the 
auspices    of    Christianity    being    thus     laid,    what    is    the    next 
supreme     phenomena     in    the    evolution    of    modern     culture? 
The  Homer  of  Christendom,  Dante  and  the  Divina  Commedia 
—  with  the  religion  of  Christ  as  the  inspiration.     Then  follow 


in  rapid  unfolding  the  creations  of  Michael  Angelo  and  Raphael 
in  cathedral  architecture,  sculpture,  and  painting  —  all  under  the 
same  mighty  impulse  of  religion  and  reproducing  in  striking 
counterpart  for  Atlantic  culture  the  age  of  Pheidias  and  Poly- 
gnotus  in  Mediterranean  art.  The  era  of  the  beautiful  is  inaug- 
urated and  achieved,  and  we  look  expectantly  for  the  birth  of 
modern  science  and  philosophy.  Descartes,  the  Aristotle  of  the 
modern  world,  inaugurates  the  philosophic  era  with  his  system 
of  Christian  monism,  and  one  by  one  the  separate  sciences  of 
nature  and  man  detach  themselves  and  follow  their  respective 
pathways,  once  more  leaving  to  philosophy  its  ancient  moral 
function  as  critic  and  purifier  of  religion  along  with  its  new 
scientific  function  as  harmonizer  and  unifier  of  the  spiritual 
cosmos. 

This  theory  of  the  law  and  process  of  culture-evolution, 
which  places  the  human  will  at  the  basis  of  all  human  achieve- 
ment and  holds  religion  to  be  the  mighty  mainspring  of  that 
will  in  the  history  of  culture,  the  crucial  spiritual  differentiation 
that  has  made  for  culture  historical  survival,  and  which  on  this 
foundation  goes  on  to  construe  the  inner  process  of  that  history 
as  a  succession  of  phenomena,  characterizable  as  social-political, 
artistic,  and  scientific,  has  been  more  fully  stated  in  a  previous 
paper  on  "the  Evolution  of  Culture." 

Having  outlined  the  successive  phases  of  spiritual  activity  as 
they  rise  into  being  in  the  course  of  culture-evolution  under  the 
promptings  of  those  eternal  longings  which  make  up  the  basal 
essence  of  human  life  as  we  find  it  in  higher  culture,  and  which 

* 

express  themselves  in  maximum  potency  in  the  typical  form  of 
religion,  we  now  approach  the  subject  of  this  inquiry,  the  peda- 
gogic application  of  the  theory. 

The  peril  of  applying  a  false  view  of  life  to  the  organization 
of  studies  bids  us  pause  at  this  point  and  reenvisage  our  practi- 
cal, efificient  data  in  clear,  cold  reason,  and  thus  fix  the  possible 
limit  of  error  in  the  theory  and  so  of  evil  in  its  application.  The 
diflficulty  of  all  spiritual  inquiry  appears  at  once  when  we  con- 
trast it,  on  the  one  hand,  with  mathematical  processes  and,  on 


36 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  HUMANITIES 


PEDAGOGIC  ASPECT  OF  CULTURE  EVOLUTION 


37 


^^i 


the   other,  with  natural  inquiry.     Mathematics  has  only  to  do 
ultimately  with  the    formal    arrangement,   never  with  the  con- 
tent of  phenomena  ;  cf.  Wundt,  System  der  Philosophie,  p.  26.     Its 
^     only  link  with  experience  exhibits   itself  in  the  form  of  a  few 
colorless  postulates :  it  is  of  all  sciences  the  farthest  removed 
from  empirical  reality.     Its  mode  of  procedure  is  purely  logical 
and  therefore  independent  of  the  whole  content  of  experience. 
Its  conclusions  are  thus  deductive  and  therefore  independent  of 
all  verification   by  observation  and   experiment.     It  is  therefore 
out  of  all  touch  with  the  difficulties  and   uncertainties  of   induc- 
tion.     Herein  we  find  apparently  the  psychological  reason  why 
mathematics  aud  its   immediate  applications  in  mechanics  and 
astronomy  should  have  so  early  attained  independent  develop- 
ment. 

We   recognize  at   once    the   increased   difficulty   of    inquiry 
when  we  pass  from  the  merely  formal  or  mathematical  sciences 
to  the  sciences  of  natural,  biological,  and  spiritual  reality.     Here 
the  objective  world  is  ever  standing  over  against  thought  and 
enforcing  conformity  between  the    results  of  induction  and  its 
own   inner   content.     The   mathematics   and    the    logic    of    the 
chemist,  the  physicist,  the  economist,  and  the  psychologist  may 
be  ever  so  faultless,  but  unless  the  data  of  experience  have  been 
so  full  as  to  suppress  no  significant  natural,  biological,  or  spiritual 
factor,  the  result,  though  perfect  mathematically  and   logically, 
will  be  repudiated  as  unreal  by  the  voice  of  reality.      Herein  we 
find  the  psychological  reason  why  physics  and  chemistry  should 
not  have  attained  independent  development  so  early  as  mathe- 
matical science  with  its  simple  empirical  data. 

But  even  within  these  more  contentful  and  real  sciences  of 
objective  empirical  experience  there  stands  out  one  group  of 
supreme  experimental  difficulty  ;  this  is  the  group  of  spiritual 
sciences,  as  contrasted  with  the  material,  or  chemical-physical 
sciences,  and  even  as  contrasted  with  kindred  biological  sciences 
in  their  restricted  sense.  The  sciences  of  spirit  depend  for  their 
data  upon  the  observation  of  spiritual  facts  ;  but  spiritual  facts, 
supremely  real  and  supremely  precious  as  they  are,  do  not  stand 


before  us  objectified  in  a  world  of  sense,  nor  can  they  be  repro- 
duced at  will  in  the  spiritual  laboratory  of  the  sociologist  and 
the  psychologist.  Herein  we  find  the  psychological  reason  why 
politics  and  psychology  were  relatively  late  in  becoming  scien- 
tifically organized. 

Striving  to  steer  clear  of  the  Charybdis  of  false  induction, 
we  have  made  in  our  theory  of  culture-evolution  only  those  wide 
generalizations  from  spiritual  phenomena  which  seem  to  be 
psychologically  justified  and  necessitated.  The  ultimate  and 
irreducible  phenomenon  in  all  life  is  an  impulse,  a  striving,  a 
want.  Rational  process  as  such  is  but  an  acquired  means  of 
demonstrably  late  origin,  applied  by  living  spirit  to  the  attain- 
ment of  its  ends.  Here  let  us  shun  for  our  lives  the  maze  of 
metaphysical  dialectics  and  use  terms  only  as  symbols  of  empiri- 
cal facts.  Let  the  psychical  anatomist  abstract  if  he  please  his 
concepts  of  thought  and  feeling  and  will  from  the  empirical 
reality  with  which  we  are  dealing,  but  let  us  not  invest  these 
fictions  of  abstracting  analysis  with  anything  further  than 
abstract  reality  and  involve  ourselves  in  idle  ratiocinations  as  to 
whether  either  of  two  inseparable  phases  of  one  reality  consti- 
tutes the  starting  point  of  culture-evolution.  When  I  use  the 
term  will  as  the  mainspring  of  culture,  I  do  not  mean  to  exclude 
thinking  or  any  necessary  element  of  spiritual  activity  :  I  mean 
simply  the  total  spiritual  reality,  symbolized  from  the  point  of 
view  of  its  active,  impelling  quality.  Phenomena  of  evolution 
present  themselves  empirically  from  no  other  side.  The  fact 
that  I  find  empirically  in  plant  and  animal  life  an  irreducible 
impulse  to  organization,  or  the  fact  that  I  find  empirically  in 
human  life  an  irreducible  impulse  to  culture-unfolding  is  wholly 
indifferent  to  any  subsequent  and  purely  logical  analysis  of  that 
impelling  reality  into  biological  or  psychological  abstractions. 
Let  us  waive  then  these  distinctions  of  thought,  and  stick  to 
objective  reality  as  empirically  presented  to  consciousness. 
There  never  was  a  thought-act  that  was  not  at  the  same  moment 
a  will-act,  there  never  was  a  will-act  that  was  not  a  thought-act ; 
and  the  subjectivity  of  feeling  is  incident  to  both. 


A{\ 


lilll 


38 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  HUMANITIES 


Granting  then  the  empirical  fact  that  the  wants  of  man  are 
basal  to  his  attainments,  what  do  we  find  those  wants  to  be   in 
every  historical  civilization  and  in  every  individual  life  ?     They 
are  first  material  wants  and  then  spiritual  wants.     The  satisfac- 
tion of  his  material  wants  is  the  condition  of  the  existence  of 
society  and  the  cause  of  its   formation.      His  spiritual  wants,  as 
we  find  them  in  history  and   personal   experience,  are  longings 
to    find    worth    and   longings  to    find  truth,   in    life   and   things. 
Everywhere  in  history  the  ideals  of  religion   furnish   the  prime 
satisfaction  of  these  longings  of  head   and  heart.      Religion   is 
clearly  the  creation   of  these  longings,  as  the  practical   institu- 
tions of  private  and  public  life  are  the  creations  of  his  material 
wants.     Then  follow  in  simple  obedience  to  psychological   law 
the  art-activity  and  the  philosophic  activity,  the  one  satisfying 
his  longing  to  objectify  his  spiritual  interests  in   imperishable 
forms  of  beauty,  the  other  satisfying  the  exacter  claims  of  reason, 
no  longer  content  with  the  naive  data  of  the  religious  presenta- 
tion in  matters  susceptible  of  natural  explanation. 

Approaching    now   our    pedagogical     problem,    we    observe 
between  these  three  successive  stages  of  culture-evolution,  society, 
art  and  science,  a  most  important  psychological   relation.     Psy- 
chologically viewed,  the  first  or  social-political  stage  is  one  of 
immediate,  presentative  spiritual  activity  ;   the  second   or  artistic 
stage  is  one  of  imaginative  spiritual  activity  ;  and  the  third,  or 
philosophic    stage,    is    one    of   rationalizing    spiritual    activity. 
These   are  no  speculative  catch-words.     It   is   not   meant   that 
any  presentative  activity  does  not  connote  both  imaginative  and 
rationalizing  activities,  nor  that  any  imaginative  activity  does 
not  connote  reflective  activity.     We  have  to  do  with  empirical 
phenomena,  not  logical  abstractions.     All  that  is  insisted  upon 
is  that  in  the  presentative  activity  which  society  evidences  in  its 
practical-political  stage  of  state  building  no  art  activity  and  no 
reflective  activity  is  as  yet  consciously  emphasized,  and  in  the 
idealizing  creations  of  art  as  they  first  appear  in  the  evolution  of 
any  individual  civilization  pure  rationalizing  spiritual  activity  is 
wholly  subconscious  and  unevolved. 


^ 


PEDAGOGIC  ASPECT  OF  CULTURE  EVOLUTION 


39 


But  this  formula  of  folk-psychology,  presentation,  imagina- 
tion, and  reflection,  is  at  once  a  formula  of  individual  psychol- 
ogy, and  our  theory  of  the  evolution  of  culture  is  verified  in 
consciousness  and  becomes  a  pedagogic  law  for  all  humanistic 
instruction.  The  psychological  order  of  the  evolution  of  col- 
lective culture  is  the  psychological  order  of  the  evolution  of 
individual  culture.  The  evolution  of  culture  is  the  evolution  of 
the  individual  spirit  written  large. 

Having  found  then  our  process  of  culture-evolution  in  history 
to  correspond  to  and  objectify  the  process  of  psychological 
unfolding  in  the  individual,  we  have  a  twofold  reason  for  the 
thoroughgoing  application  of  the  theory  to  all  instruction  in 
the  history  of  culture  ;  our  theory  presents  the  grand  and  salient 
phenomena  of  civilization,  economic-social,  creative-artistic,  and 
scientific-reflective,  in  their  chronological  sequence,  the  only 
possible  order  for  the  study  of  processes  of  life,  and,  further- 
more, since  these  phenomena  prove  to  stand  in  a  natural  psy- 
chological sequence,  the  mind  of  the  pupil,  approaching  them 
not  merely  in  the  order  of  their  unfolding,  but  actually  in  the 
order  of  its  own  unfolding,  is  thus  stimulated  to  full,  healthy 
development  in  sympathy  with  the  total  life  of  cultured  human- 
ity. 

Thus  we  shall  have  the  true  humanities,  philosophically 
organized  and  invested  with  supreme  pedagogic  efficiency  in  all 
directions.  The  gain  will  be  infinite,  whereas  the  loss  will  be 
nil.  In  place  of  the  old  chaos  we  shall  have  a  cosmos,  whose 
fair  order  and  noble  worth  will  silence  forever  the  ignoramus 
and  the  bigot,  and  all  their  brayings  against  Greek.  The  study 
of  one  rounded  civilization  will  bring  the  student  in  touch  with 
the  active  forces  of  all,  and  with  the  heart-beat  of  culture-his- 
tory. He  will  learn  the  power  of  an  ideal  in  human  life,  and 
observe  the  influences  of  natural  environment.  He  will  be 
present  at  the  organization  of  society,  and  watch  the  growth  of 
institutions.  He  will  behold  the  birth  of  art  and  realize  its 
function  in  culture.  He  will  understand  the  beginnings  of  philoso- 
phy and  see  the  separate  sciences  leap  Minerva-like  from  its 


40 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  HUMANITIES 


brow.     He   will  incarnate  the  pure  spirit   of  humanity   in  the 
highest  sense  of  the 

"  Homo  sum,  humani  nil  a  me  alienum  puto!  " 

Our  law  is  discovered,  our  task  done.     When  science  dis- 
covers a  law,  its  application  becomes  immediate  and  mechanical. 
But  the  glory  of  a  physical  law  is  one,  and  the  glory  of  a  spiritual 
law  is  another;  the  one  is  a  principle  of  divine  mechanism,  the 
other  of  divine   life.     The   application   of    a   physical    law   can 
effect  the  higher  life  of  humanity  only  indirectly,  the  application 
of  a  spiritual  law  reaches  the  heart  of  humanity  and  determines 
the  issues  of  life.     Let  us  briefly  test  its  application  to  the  most 
difficult   case   in  history,  the  civilization  of  the  Latins.     I  say, 
the  most  difficult  civilization  for  the  fair  test  of  our  pedagogic 
scheme,  because  Roman  civilization   never  evolved  with  native, 
indigenous   life    beyond  the  first  stage  of  culture-evolution:  its 
supreme  achievements  were  social-political ;  its  art  and  science 
were  abortive  graftings  from  the  eternal  flower  of  Greece. 

The  ultimate  aim  of  all  humanistic  instruction  is  to  humanize. 
To  humanize  is  to  enrich  the  heart  and  mind  of  the  student  by 
leading  him  to  live  over  in  thought  and  feeling  the  complete 
spiritual  unfolding  of  a  great  people  by  repeating  in  imagination 
the  experience  of  their  sensuous  environment,  of  their  religious 
sanctions,  their  social  and  political  life,  their  poetry  and  forma- 
tive art,  their  philosophy  and  science.  If  such  knowledge  of 
man  is  the  beau  ideal  of  humanistic  study,  our  theory  of  the 
evolution  of  culture  furnishes  a  clear-cut  rationale  for  the  work 
of  preparatory  and  collegiate  instruction. 

The  spirit  and  ideal  of  both  is  the  same.  The  stress  of  pre- 
paratory instruction,  however,  must  lie  in  preparation,  since  the 
four  years  of  high-school  work  are  too  short  for  the  full  realiza- 
tion of  the  humanistic  ideal.  That  ideal,  however,  should,  in 
all  historical  instruction,  be  constantly  held  before  the  mind  of 
the  high-school  pupil,  and  even  in  the  Latin  reading  of  the  pre- 
paratory years  the  way  should  be  laid  for  the  comprehensive 
grasp  of  the  phenomena  of  culture  as  more  elaboratory  unfolded 


PEDAGOGIC  ASPECT  OF  CULTURE  EVOLUTION 


41 


in  the  college  courses.  Simple  historical  reading,  with  appro- 
priate suggestions  and  illustrations  as  to  the  geographical  envi- 
ronment, religious  beliefs,  customs  and  institutions  of  the  people, 
followed  by  similar  readings  in  poetry,  illustrative  of  the  power 
of  the  national  ideals  in  art  creation,  and  accompanied  by  simple 
objective  instruction  in  the  inspiring  beauties  of  plastic  and 
architectural  art,  will  represent  the  culture-historical  side  of 
high-school  Latin.  In  the  meantime,  grammatical  and  linguistic 
studies  will  fall  into  line  in  their  true  perspective,  and  will  pro- 
ceed under  the  fine  impulse  of  an  irresistible  human  interest  in 
the  highest  achievements  of  the  race.  Should  the  hard  injustice 
of  fate  cut  short  the  education  of  the  individual  at  the  close  of 
the  high-school  stage,  he  will  nevertheless  have  won  both  in 
general  history  proper  and  in  the  special  discipline  of  the  classics 
a  living  principle  of  thought  and  study  that  will  give  him  a 
power  and  a  grasp  over  the  processes  of  all  higher  national  life, 
and  best  equip  him  for  usefulness  in  the  state.  Should  fortune, 
on  the  other  hand,  smile  upon  his  destiny,  he  will  enter  college 
equipped,  among  other  things,  with  that  practical  mastery  of  the 
language  in  prose  and  verse  which  will  enable  him,  in  the  main, 
to  take  up  the  literature  in  the  order  suggested  both  by  the  his- 
tory of  culture  and  by  the  process  of  psychological  activity,  that 
is,  the  practical,  historical*  literature  first,  the  imaginative  and 
poetic  next,  and  the  philosophic  or  reflective  last. 

It  is  obvious  that  in  the  first,  or,  as  I  may  term  it  for  the 
sake  of  brevity,  the  historical  course  proper,  the  order  in  which 
the  authors  should  be  taken  up  would  be  determined  by  the 
order  of  the  historical  periods  of  which  they  treated,  for  all 
process,  spiritual  and  physical,  must  be  studied  chronologi- 
cally. The  process  of  their  narrative  is  by  definition  the  process 
of  the  social  and  political  unfolding.  Hence  the  most  diffi- 
cult author  in  any  given  cycle  of  culture  might  be  the  first 
to  be  attacked  because  of  the  primal  position  of  his  subject- 
matter  in  the  historical  unfolding.  The  difficulty  that  would 
confront  inadequate  or  faulty  preparation,  however,  would  be 
serious  only  at  the  beginning  of  the  college  course.     If  the  first 


42 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  HUMANITIES 


over-difficult  author  were  successfully  accomplished,  the  chance 
of  a  like  encounter  would  be  ipso  facto  greatly  diminished,  for 
one  tolerably  difficult  historian  would  probably  smooth  the  way 
for  all  that  followed.  The  culture-historical  foundation  being 
laid  in  the  first  course,  the  art  and  philosophy  will  follow  in  easy 
and  natural  sequence,  while  the  question  of  the  relative  diffi- 
culty of  authors  within  the  succeeding  courses  will  have  lost  its 
seriousness  after  the  experience  gained  in  connection  with  the 
first. 

Again,  when  we  come  to  the  second  and  third  series  of  phe- 
nomena, the  art-activity,  and  the  philosophic-scientific  thought 
of  the  people,  a  different  principle  of  arrangement  must  clearly 
prevail ;  for  while,  in   the  first  series,  our  chronology  is  that  of 
the   subject-matter,   since   that    furnishes   the  order  of  culture- 
evolution,  in  the  artistic  and  philosophic  stages  our  chronology 
is  that  of  the  authors,  because  their  successive  appearance  marks 
the  process  of  unfolding  of  art  and  science,  whereas  the  chro- 
nology of  their  subject-matter  is  indifferent.     Here,  therefore, 
the  most  antique  and  possibly  difficult  poet  or  philosopher  would 
be   taken   up   first,    and   the   brunt  of  difficulty  would  again  be 
encountered  at  the  beginning,  instead  of  at  the  end,  of  the  poetic 
and  philosophic  courses  respectively.     This  difficulty,  however, 
will  be  continually  minimizedbythegrammatical-linguisticstudies 
incidental  to  the  reading  of  the  authors,  for  these  studies  will 
continue  to  go  hand-in-hand  with  the  culture-historical  series  in 
the  college  until  the  theory  of  the  language  has  been  thoroughly 
mastered,  and  the  foundation  laid  for  specialistic  linguistics  in 
the  university.      But  since  the  humanistic  aim  is  paramount  for 
the  highest  ends  of  life,  the  linguistic  interest  will  be  best  sub- 
served  by   subordinating  it   to   that   aim    throughout   the   high 
school  and  college  humanities. 

Assuming  now  that  our  four  years'  course  of  high-school 
Latin  has  duly  accomplished  its  task  of  preparation  for  the  col- 
lege humanities  as  above  characterized,  it  remains  for  us  to  out- 
line the  pedagogic  process  of  the  humanistic  side  of  college 
Latin.     We  are  first  concerned  with  the  foundations  of  Roman 


PEDAGOGIC  ASPECT  OF  CULTURE  EVOLUTION 


43 


civilizatioi*  or  the  historical  side  proper.  The  historical  authors 
in  the  chronological  sequence  of  subject  matter  become  the 
appropriate  Latin  reading,  for,  besides  presenting  the  Roman 
view  of  the  historic  unfolding  of  the  nation  from  its  origin  to  its 
climax,  they  furnish  the  true  context  for  the  study  of  the  essen- 
tial factors  of  the  first  stage  of  all  civilization,  the  physical 
environment  or  Classical  Geography,  the  religious  ideals  or 
Classical  Mythology,  and  the  social  and  political  institutions  or 
the  Private  and  Public  Antiquities  of  the  nation.  Livy,  Sallust, 
Cicero,  and  Tacitus,  furnish  abundant  reading  for  the  longest 
possible  course  in  Roman  historical  writing,  while  Nepos,  Pliny 
the  Younger,  and  Suetonius,  furnish  available  parallel  reading 
in  touch  with  the  spirit  of  the  course. 

The  remaining  culture-historical  topics,  which  may  be  called 
collateral  studies  as  accompanying  the  formal  reading  of  the  lit- 
erature, may  all  be  compassed  in  a  single  course  and  in  sub- 
stantial and  suggestive  outline  through  excellent  manuals  of 
elementary  or  of  advanced  character,  according  to  the  needs  of 
the  individual  or  the  class.  Such  manuals  have  been  prepared 
in  Classical  Geography,  in  Classical  Mythology,  and  in  the 
Religious  and  Secular  Institutions  of  the  Romans,  while  the 
entire  treasury  of  modern  historical  commentary  upon  Roman 
History,  Religion,  and  Antiquities  completes  our  possible  col- 
lateral apparatus.  Indeed  this  blending  of  the  modern  point  of 
view,  as  presented  by  the  great  authorities  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  with  the  antique,  as  presented  in  the  classic  authors,  is 
the  saving  clause  in  the  theory  of  the  Latin  humanities  ;  thus 
do  we  wed  the  past  and  the  present,  and  the  torch  of  culture 
beams  with  added  lustre  over  the  union. 

Nor  should  it  be  feared  that  the  volume  of  the  work  tran- 
scends the  possibilities  of  even  the  shortest  college  year  ;  it  is 
not  details  of  knowledge,  but  living  principles  of  spiritual  evolu- 
tion, that  constitute  the  goal  of  humanistic  studies.  The  point 
of  view  is  all.  A  few  winged  words  here  and  there  from  the 
lips  of  a  teacher  who  has  stood  face  to  face  with  these  phenom- 
ena,  who    has   felt   the  mighty  heart-beat  of  historic  life,  will 


44 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  HUMANITIES 


suffice  to  open  up  the  vista  down  which  a  single  glance  is  worth 
an   encyclopaedia  of    dead    facts.     The    important    pedagogical 
point  is  not  at  all  the  matter,  but  the  spirit  of  the  teaching.    Let 
the  teacher  guard  the  spirit,  and   it  will   follow  as  the  night  the 
day  that  the  matter  will  take  care  of  itself.     The   simplest  and 
briefest  course  of  historical  reading  will  furnish  abundant  occa- 
sion to  show  in  unmistakable  light  the  operation  of  these  laws 
of  culture,  and  that,  too,  without  compromising  the  regular  sub- 
ject-matter of  instruction  ;  on  the  contrary,  that  subject-matter 
will  assume  a  deeper  significance   under  the  transfiguring  light 
of  these  higher  truths.     To  recognize  the  significance  of  environ- 
ment, of  the  physical  basis,  in  man's  life,  to  see  the  necessity  and 
the  power  of  the  religious  ideal  in  culture-evolution,  to  watch 
the  simple  unfoldings  of  customs  and  laws  and  of  the  individual 
and  national  character  which  they  express,  are  things  to  which 
every  page  of  Latin  history  lends  pointed  and  precious  occasion. 
And  such  is  the  high  spiritual  function  of  the  first  course  in  the 
Latin  humanities. 

Having   caught  the    spirit   of    the   social-political   epoch    in 
Roman  civilization,  we  are  prepared  to   observe   the   next   phe- 
nomenon, which  follows  with   unerring  precision, —  the  artistic 
life  of  the  people.      Religious  poetry  and  song,  temple  architec- 
ture, with  its  handmaidens,  sculpture,  and  painting,  repeat  the 
old  story  of  man's  spiritual  life  in  the   native  art-activity  of  the 
Romans.     But    before  Roman    art  had  developed    beyond  the 
rudest  beginnings,  two  disturbing  factors  are  introduced  into  the 
course  of  evolution, —  the  decay  of  religion  and  slavery  to  Greek 
genius.     In  place  of  an  ideal  religion  of  gods  and  heroes  we  have 
a   practical   religion  of  state;   patriotism    monopolizes   the  reli- 
gious sanction.     A  naive  patriotism  is  practical  and  not  ideal ;  it 
grasps  after  the  ripened  fruit  wherewith  to   crown  its  idol.     At 
the   very   dawn   of   Roman   indigenous   art-life,    Greek    Poetry, 
Greek  Architecture,  Greek  Sculpture  and  Painting,  became  one 
vast  plunder  pile  for  this  patriotic  vandal,  and  we  are  left  with 
the  barren  waste  of   Roman  Art.     The  beauty  we  find  there  is 
primarily  Greek,  the  waste  is  Roman.      Hence,  in  this  stage  of 


PEDAGOGIC  ASPECT  OF  CULTURE  EVOLUTION 


45 


Roman  culture,  as  indeed  throughout  its  entire  subsequent  his- 
tory, the  fruitful  humanistic  point  of  view  will  be  dominantly  the 
religious,  ethical,  and  political  aspect  of  Roman  civilization,  and 
only  subordinately  the  purely  artistic  or  scientific  interest.     Plau- 
tus  and  Terence,  Catullus  and   Horace,  Vergil  and  the  Elegiac 
Poets,  along  with  the  study  of  Roman  Metric  Art  will  constitute 
our  literary  canon,  and  Roman  Formative  Art  will  round  the  sec- 
ond course  in  the  Latin  humanities.     In  this  latter  connection  a 
new  principle  of  pedagogic  treatment  rises  into  such  importance 
as  to  demand  special  comment, —  this  is  the  principle  of  object- 
lessons.     Plastic  Art,  including  Architecture,  is  objective,  and 
therefore  demands  for  its  proper  study  concrete    illustrations. 
This  need  will  already  have  been  felt  in  connection  with  the 
religion  and  the  social  life  of  the  people,  but  here  the  ordinary 
illustrations    afforded    by  the  dictionary    of    antiquities    or   by 
diagrams  and  wall-plates  answer  all  practical  purposes,  since  the 
aesthetic  sense  is  not  primarily  involved  in  the   consideration  of 
the  religious  and  social  phenomena  of  culture-history.     But  in 
the  study  of  the  art-life  of  a  nation  it  is  a  prime  necessity  that 
their  creations    of    beauty  be    realized    by  the    student    either 
through    the    aid  of    reproductions    or  of    exact    photographs. 
Plaster  casts  of  typical  sculpture,  and  models  of  characteristic 
architectural  details,  open  up   a  new  world  to  the  pupil  whose 
experience  has  hitherto  been  limited  to  the  text-book.     Roman 
music  falls  outside  our  pedagogic  province  because  the  musical 
note  dies  with  the  vibration  that  produced  it.     Painting,  too,  is 
of  little  pedagogic  importance  because  the  colors  fade  with  the 
lapse  of  ages,  and  only  some  rare  catastrophe,  like  the  volcanic 
burial  of  Pompeii,  preserves  to  us  the  relics  of  antique  painting. 
A  museum  of  Archaeology  and  Art  is  thus  an  invaluable  aid  to 
the  humanistic  studies  of  the  first  and  second    courses.      But 
with  a  people  whose  civilization,  like  ours,  corresponds  for  the 
most    part  with  the    first,  or  social-political    stage,  such   ideal 
needs  are  the  last  to  be  supplied,  and  the  student  is  fortunate 
who  has  access  to  a  good  collection  of  photographs,  or  better 
still,  to  a  few  well-selected  plaster-casts.     In  Architecture  the 


46 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  HUMANITIES 


capitals  and  entablatures  of  the  Greek  orders  and  of  their 
Roman  modifications,  in  Sculpture  a  grand  type  from  each 
successive  period  of  art  from  the  Lion  Gate  of  Mycense  to 
the  last  dying  smile  of  beauty  on  the  Triumphal  Arch  of  the 
Romans,  would  make  a  little  humanistic  series  worth  its  weight 
in  gold  for  the  high  ends  of  culture. 

The  state  being  founded  and  beautified,  there  is  nothing  now 
left  for  the  restless  spirit  of  man  but  to  philosophize,  to  inquire. 
With  this  third  and  highest   stage  of  historic   life  we  enter  into 
the  inner   loom  of    the   culture-evolution   of  humanity,  for  the 
philosopher  of  one  era  must  start  out  from  the  theories  of  his 
teachers,  however   radically  he   may  subsequently  diverge   from 
their  standpoints.     Hence  it  is  that  the  history  of  philosophic 
and  scientific  thought  presents  itself  as  a  continuous  stream  into 
which  all  cultures,  individual  and  national,  converge  at  their  high- 
est stage,  and  no  portion  of  which  can  be  understood  apart  from 
the  current  of  which  it  is  a  segment.     The  silver  cord  of  rational 
continuity  articulates  all   philosophic   systems  in  the  same   cul- 
ture-historical    cycle.       The    history  of   philosophy,    therefore, 
marks  in  a  peculiar  sense  the   high-water  line  of  culture  along 
the  continuous  pathway  of  humanity's  spiritual  unfolding.    When 
we  survey  the   Roman   spiritual  world  at   its  entrance  upon   the 
reflective  stage  of   culture,  we  note  the  striking   fact   that   the 
Romans  have  lapsed  into  the  same  religious  and  moral  slough  of 
despond  as  the    Greeks  subsequent  to  Alexander.     The  religion 
of  the  gods  had  failed  them  and    now  the  religion  of  patriotism 
was  well   nigh  starved  out.     Philosophy,  therefore,  in   the   form 
of  a  consolatory  ethics,  attempts  to  substitute  the  religion  it  has 
helped  to  undermine,  and,  like  Greek   art  in  the  previous  stage, 
Greek  Stoicism,  Epicureanism,  and  Skepticism  were  received  with 
open  arms  into  the   Roman   thought-world.      Our  pedagogical 
task  is  thus  clearly  defined  for  the  reflective  period   of  the  Latin 
humanities:  Roman  Ethical  Philosophy  in  Lucretius,  Cicero,  and 
Seneca,  with    collateral    reading  in   the   History  of   Philosophy, 
will  constitute  the  gist  of  the  work,— and  our  pedagogical  scheme' 
for  the  undergraduate  humanities  is  completely  unfolded. 


PEDAGOGIC  ASPECT  OF  CULTURE  EVOLUTION 


47 


Departments  of  literary  activity  subordinate  to  the  typical 
forms  utilized  in  the  curriculum  but  yet  involving  authors  of 
importance  will  fall  into  line  without  difificulty  as  collateral  or 
supplementary  courses  under  their  appropriate  culture-historical 
periods.  Thus  Roman  Biography,  as  represented  by  Nepos, 
Tacitus,  and  Suetonius,  would  associate  itself  with  the  historical 
authors ;  Roman  Rhetoric  and  Oratory,  as  discussed  by  Cicero 
and  Quintilian,  with  the  artistic  period ;  and  Roman  Satire,  as  it 
appears  in  Horace,  Juvenal,  and  Persius,  with  the  philosophic  or 
reflective  era. 

Our  theory  of  the  evolution  of  culture,  therefore,  when  applied 
to  the  special  civilization  before  us,  reduces  the  chaos  of  culture- 
historical  phenomena  to  the  organic  unity  of  a  biological  process, 
unfolding  itself,  as  above  exhibited,  in  the  consecutive  phases  of 
Roman  culture.  But  on  the  basis  of  this  organic  unity  we  are 
led  to  an  organized  view  of  universal  history.  The  reflective 
period  of  Roman  thought  is  the  one  supreme  crisis  in  the  evolu- 
tion of  culture,  the  dividing  line  that  marks  the  death  of  Medi- 
terranean, and  the  birth  of  Atlantic,  ideals.  Here  the  powers 
that  sway  the  destiny  of  spirit  are  in  council  and  the  issue 
trembles  in  the  balance.  Over  the  drooping  spirit  of  humanity 
the  genius  of  Reason  and  Despair  is  in  deadly  struggle  with  the 
nascent  genius  of  Faith  and  Hope,  the  Philosophy  and  Religion 
of  Rome  with  the  Religion  of  Christ.  The  old  order  dies,  but, 
phoenix-like,  out  of  its  ashes,  emerges  the  spirit  of  our  race.  Of 
him  who,  having  eyes  to  see,  has  occupied  this  point  of  culture- 
historical  vantage,  it  may  be  said  as  of  the  Homeric  seer, 

U?  riOT)  Ta  T   eovra  ra  t   eao-ofieva  irpo  t   eovra. 

Behind  him  the  vista  of  Mediterranean  civilization  opens  up, 
beginning  in  Egypt,  passing  into  Western  Asia,  then  into  Greece, 
and  ending  in  Rome.  "As  the  streams,"  says  Niebuhr,  "lose 
themselves  in  the  mightier  ocean,  so  the  history  of  the  peoples 
once  distributed  along  the  Mediterranean  shores,  is  absorbed  in 
that  of  the  mighty  mistress  of  the  world."  Through  Rome  the 
broken  threads  of  spiritual  history  are  caught  up  and  woven  into 


m 


48 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  HUMANITIES 


the  seamless  woof  of  Aryan  culture.     When  Carthage  falls  the 
Coptic  and  Aramaean  threads  are  caught  up.    When  Corinth  was 
captured  the  sunset  of  Grecian   culture  fades   into   the    dawn  of 
Roman.     So,  too,  Roman  Art  and  Philosophy  take  up  the  torch 
of  Beauty  and  Truth  transmitted  from  the  previous  stage,  and  lead 
him  inevitably  to  contemplate  the  continuous  life  of  Mediterranean 
civilization.    Before  him  opens  the  vista  of  Atlantic  culture  under 
the  pole  star  of  Christianity,  and  he  beholds  the   old  process  of 
spiritual  evolution  repeat   itself  on  a  scale  as  much    larger  than 
that  of  Rome,  or  Athens,  or  Carthage,  or  Thebes,  as  the  religion 
of  Truth  and  Love  is  larger  than  the  religion  of  Patriotism,  or  of 
Beauty,  or  of  physical  Light  and  Life. 
• 
In  conclusion,  I    may  illustrate  the  practical   application    of 
my  philosophy  of  the  humanities  to  the  actual   organization  of 
Latin  studies  in  the  college   by  instancing   my  own  practice   as 
outlined  in  the  catalogue  of   the  University  of  Texas  ;  cf.  cata- 
logue for  1896-7,  pp. 71-75. 

SCHOOL    OF   LATIN 
FOR  UNDERGRADUATES. 

General  Explanation. —  The  instruction  offered  presup- 
poses at  least  four  years  of  substantial  training  in  reading  and 
writing  Latin.'  The  undergraduate  work  is  arranged  in  two  par- 
allel series  of  courses,  one  in  literature  and  one  in  language.  The 
series  in  literature  (A,  B,  C)  presents  in  three  successive  courses 
the  three  successive  stages  in  the  evolution  of  Roman  culture  — 
the  social-political,  the  artistic,  and  the  philosophic  or  reflective 
stage.  Thus  the  order  of  study  is  the  order  of  historic  unfold- 
ing. The  series  in  language  (A',  B',  C)  accompanies  and  sup- 
plements the  series  in  literature.  As  elective,  either  series  may 
be  taken  and  counted  apart  from  the  other,  but  as  prescribed, 
credit  is  not  given  in  the  literary  except  in  conjunction  with  the 
grammatical.     The  courses  included  under  D  are  offered  as  com- 

'  Unanimously  voted  by  the  Superintendents  and  Principals  of  Texas  at  the  meet- 
ing of  the  State  Association  on  June  29,  1897. 


PEDAGOGIC  ASPECT  OF  CULTURE  EVOLUTION 


49 


plementary  reading  to  Courses  A,  B,  and  C,  respectively,  and 
Course  D'  forms  an  appropriate  supplement  to  Courses  A',  B', 
C  Students  are  admitted  to  any  course  by  which  they  are 
prepared  to  profit,  but  credit  for  back  work  implies  formal  exam- 
ination on  the  subjects  involved. 

Course  A  —  Literary:  The  Social -Political  Stage. 

The  aim  of  this  course  is  to  exhibit  the  elements  of  Roman 
civilization  on  its  social  and  political  side.  It  consists  of  con- 
nected readings  in  the  Roman  historians,  supplemented  by  col- 
lateral studies  in  geography,  religion,  and  mythology,  and  in  the 
private  and  public  life  of  the  people. 

1 .  Latin  reading  in  Roman  Legendary  and  Authentic  History  : 
Livy,  Books  i-ii,  xxi-xxii  ;  SdMust,  Jugurthine  War  and  Conspiracy 
of  Catiline  ;  Tacitus,  Germania.  The  attention  of  the  student  is 
fixed,  through  the  sources,  upon  the  order  and  process  of  Roman 
historical  evolution.  The  readings  follow  the  order  of  history, 
and  are  as  extensive  as  the  preparation  of  the  class  makes  possi- 
ble. To  students  specializing  in  Latin,  appropriate  reading  in 
Nepos  and  Cicero  is  recommended  in  connection  with  the  authors 
read  in  class.  The  student  is  urged  to  keep  the  historical  connec- 
tion and  to  bridge  over  any  gap  in  the  Latin  sources  by  reading 
a  connected  account  in  some  English  classic,  for  example,  the 
translation  of  Mommsen's  History  of  Rome. 

2.  Collateral  reading  in  Classical  Geography  (^.  g.,  Tozer), 
Roman  Mythology  (^e.  g,,  Gayley),and  the  Antiquities  of  Pri- 
vate and  Public  Life  (^.  ^.,  Wilkins)  ;  for  specialistic  reference, 
Kiepert's  Ancient  Geography,  Preller's  Romische  Mythologie,  Mar- 
quardt-Mommsen's  Handbuch  der  Romischen  Alterthiimer  or  Ram- 
say's Roman  A?itiquities. 

Course  A' — Grammatical. 

1.  Latin  Grammar  in  general,  with  emphasis  upon  the  funda- 
mental laws  of  the  language. 

2.  Exercises  in  Latin  Prose  Composition  and  in  simple  Latin 
conversation. 


50 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  HUMANITIES 


Course  B  —  Literary:  The  Artistic  Stage. 

The  aim  of  this  course  is  to  exhibit  the  elements  of  Roman 
civilization  on  its  aesthetic  side.  It  consists,  on  the  one  hand,  of 
readings  from  the  Roman  poets  in  historical  sequence,  accom- 
panied by  the  study  of  the  Latin  verse-forms,  and,  on  the  other, 
of  an  illustrated  course  in  Roman  art. 

1.  Latin  reading  in  Roman  Poetry  :  The  Drama,  Plautus  and 
Terence  ;  Lyric  poetry,  Catullus  and  Horace  ;  Epic  poetry,  Vergil. 
To  those  specializing  in  their  Latin  studies,  additional  reading  is 
recommended  in  Elegiac  poetry  (Ovid,  Tibullus,  and  Propertius), 
and  a  wider  range  in  Epic  poetry.  The  Metric  forms  of  Latin 
poetry  are  taught  practically  in  connection  with  the  authors  read 
in  the  class. 

2.  An  illustrated  course  in  Roman  Formative  Art  (^.  g.,  Tar- 
bell  and  Goodyear)  ;  for  specialistic  reference,  Reber's  History 
of  Ancient  Art.  A  collection  of  photographs  from  the  originals 
is  used  to  illustrate  this  course. 

Course  B' — Grammatical. 

1.  A  systematic  study  of  Latin  Grammar,  with  emphasis  upon 
the  Syntax  of  the  Noun. 

2.  Exercises  in  Latin  Prose  Composition. 

Course  C — Literary:  The  Reflective  Stage. 

The  aim  of  this  course  is  to  exhibit  the  elements  of  Roman 
civilization  viewed  from  its  philosophic  or  reflective  side.  The 
ethical  schools  of  the  Romans  are  studied  in  their  relations  to 
Greek  philosophy  on  the  one  hand,  and  to  Roman  religion  on 
the  other. 

1.  Latin  reading  in  Roman  Philosophy:  Electicism,  Cicero 
(Weissenfels,  Cicero's  Philosophische  Schriften) ;  Epicureanism, 
Lucretius;  Stoicism,  Seneca.  Wider  reading,  especially  in 
Cicero,  is  recommended  to  students  specializing  in  Latin  or 
Philosophy. 

2.  Collateral  reading  in  the  History  of  Philosophic  Thought 
in  antiquity,  with  special  reference  to  the  ethical  schools  of  the 


PEDAGOGIC  ASPECT  OF  CULTURE  EVOLUTION 


51 


Romans  [e.  g.,  Burt  or  Zeller's  Outlines^,  supplemented  by 
translations  of  Epictetus  (<f.^.,  Rolleston)  and  Marcus  Aurelius 
(^.  g.,  Zimmern)  ;  for  special  study,  Zeller's  History  of  Greek 
Philosophy.  Papers  are  prepared  by  the  individual  members  of 
the  class  and  discussed  on  stated  occasions. 

Course  C — Grammatical. 

1.  A  systematic  study  of  Latin  Grammar,  with  emphasis 
upon  the  Syntax  of  the  Verb. 

2.  Exercises  in  Latin  Prose  Composition. 

Supplementary  Courses. 

The  object  of  these  courses  is  to  cover  several  important 
phases  of  humanistic  study  not  represented  in  the  particular  cur- 
riculum offered  above,  and  thus  to  provide  also  for  those  who 
desire  to  widen  the  range  of  their  culture-historical  and  linguistic- 
logical  studies. 

Course  D  —  Literary. 

1.  Latin  reading  in  Roman  History  and  Biography  (Tacitus, 
Suetonius),  or  in  Roman  Rhetoric  and  Oratory  (Cicero,  Quin- 
tilian),  or  in    Roman  Satiric  Poetry  (Horace,  Persius,  Juvenal). 

2.  Collateral  reading  in  the  History  of  Latin  Literature  (^.  g.^ 
Mackail)  ;  for  special  purposes,  Teuffel's  History  of  Roman  Lit- 
erature. 

Course  D' — Historical  Grammar. 

1.  A  general  cultural  course  in  the  Science  of  Language, 
with  special  stress  upon  the  Roman  popular  speech  and  its  evo- 
lution into  the  Romanic  idioms. 

2.  More  advanced  exercises  in  Latin  Prose  Composition  and 
practice  in  Latin  conversation. 

Reviewing  now  our  general  theory,  let  us  be  careful  to  avoid 
all  mechanical  and  Procrustean  applications.  The  letter  killeth 
in  matters  of  spirit.  Practical  considerations  may  suggest  mod- 
ifications here  and  there,  such  as  incidental  violation  of  the  his- 


52 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  HUMANITIES 


torical  sequence  of  authors,  the  omission  of  particular  features 
of  the  plan,  and  the  substitution   of  others.     Such   exceptional 
details  need  only  serve   to   place   in   bolder   relief  the   develop- 
mental  principle   of   spirit.      Indeed,   I   would   even   approve   a 
total  rejection  of  the  scheme,  provided  a  truer  one  be  proposed 
in  its  stead.     The  whole  contention  is  for  a  rational,  philosophic 
basis  to  humanistic  pedagogy  as  against  the  traditional  law  of 
chaos.     In  this  way  we  shall  most  surely  succeed  in  resurrecting 
the  buried  spirit  of  the   Humanities,  for  thus  shall  we  breathe 
into  them  the  life  of  spirit;    and  the    Philistines  of  the  nine- 
teenth   century   will   rage   in    vain   about   the    fortress    of    the 
classics.      Furthermore,   experience    has    led    me    to    avoid     all 
specialistic  or  technical  courses  in  the  undergraduate  humani- 
ties, as,  for  example,  formal   courses  of  lectures  on  the   History 
of   Latin    Literature,   Metric,  Art,  and   the   like,  which   belong 
more  appropriately  to  graduate  specialization,  and  presuppose  a 
technical  interest  on  the  part  of  the  student.     The  ideal  of  under- 
graduate  instruction   is   rather   an   intimate   spiritual   exchange 
between  pupil  and  teacher,  which,  indeed,  admits  of  formal  lec- 
turing  only  incidentally   and   for    purposes   of    inspiration   and 
rather    demands    mutual    concentration   upon   a   subject-matter 
ready  to  hand. 


ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  LATIN    HUMANITIES 


'•ii 


■Si 

"A 


III. 

ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  LATIN  HUMANITIES  IN 

SECONDARY  EDUCATION. 


Delivered  before  the  Texas  State  Association  of  Superintendents  and  Principals 

in  June  of  1897. 


There  are  two  imperishable  functions  of  Latin  studies  in  the 
education  of  youth  :  the  one  is  culture-historical,  the  other  lin- 
guistic-logical.     The    culture-historical     function    operates    by 
humanizing  and  is  essentially  ethical,  the  linguistic-logical  func- 
tion operates  by  disciplining  the  practical  powers  of  the  mind 
and  is  essentially  intellectual  and  subsidiary  to  the  high  ethical 
aim  of  the  humanities.     The  stress  of  preparatory  instruction  in 
any  foreign  or  ancient  civilization  falls  upon  the  linguistic  side, 
since  an  adequate  mastery  of  the  language  is  prerequisite  to  the 
study  of  the   literature   and   essential   to   full  culture-historical 
insight  and  sympathy.     But  since  the  linguistic-logical  form  is 
indifferent  to  the  content  we  may,  from  the  very  beginning  of 
humanistic  studies,  wed  the  linguistic   to  the  culture-historical 
interest  by  choosing  for  all  linguistic  exercises  matter  that  will 
open  up  to  the  young  mind  the  orderly  vista  of  culture-histor- 
ical phenomena.     In  thus  placing  history  above  language,  evo- 
lution above  grammar,  we  do  not  belittle  grammatical  studies 
but  bring  them  into  their  true  relation  to  culture-historical  disci- 
pline.    We  do  not  question  that  considered  in  itself  grammar, 
in  the  full  sense  of  the  science  of  the  sounds,  inflections,  word- 
formations,  sentence-formations,  and  verse-forms  of    language, 
is  the  most  immediately  useful  and  practical  of  all  disciplines 
and  must  inevitably  grow  more  so  as  long  as  culture  advances 
and  language  remains  the  medium  of  thought  exchange.     Let 
no  teacher  hesitate  to  say,  "Young  man  or  young  woman,  culti- 
vate grammatical  studies,  and  your  success  anywhere  within  the 
borders  of  civilization  will  be  doubly  sure.     Whatever  you  do, 

55 


56 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  HUMANITIES 


if  practical  success  is  your  aim,  perfect  your  mastery  over  the 
most  perfect  and  indispensable  tool  of  life  :  study  grammar ;  be 
an  expert,  full  and  rounded  grammarian."  So  exalted  an  opin- 
ion must  the  thoughtful  student  hold  of  the  practical  value  of 
linguistic-logical  studies.  But  as  there  is  one  glory  of  the  sun  and 
another  glory  of  the  moon,  so  there  is  one  glory  of  culture-history 
and  another  glory  of  grammar.  Culture-history,  or  spiritual  evo- 
lution, is  the  all  illumining  and  vivifying  sun  from  whose  fruitful 
lap  language  and  all  other  human  and  spiritual  creations  have 
sprung  and  from  which  alone  they  derive  significance  and  worth. 
Let  us  rest  assured,  then,  that  the  health  of  grammatical  studies 
will  be  best  conserved  by  keeping  them  in  warm  touch  with  the 
life  of  culture-history.  In  all  grammar-teaching  let  us  remember 
that  we  are  dealing  with  form  and  not  with  content  and  let  us 
therefore  see  to  it  that  the  form  is  irradiated  and  glorified  by 
the  supreme  worth  of  the  thought  it  is  made  to  embody.  While 
we  teach  grammar  let  us  also  teach  the  highest  and  most  fasci- 
natingly interesting  of  all  lessons,  the  lesson  of  man's  spiritual 
unfolding,  remembering  that  this  lesson  begins  with  the  first  bio- 
,  graphical-historical  exercise  of  the  primary  pupil. 

With  grammar,  then,  as  an  instrument,  and  culture-history  as 
the  chief  goal,  let  us  now  inquire  what  principles  shall  guide  us 
in  choosing  the  literature  in  which  that  culture-history  is  set 
forth  and  in  vital  connection  with  which  all  grammatical  studies 
will  best  proceed.  Our  fundamental  principle  must  of  course 
be  that  the  literature  read  shall  conform  to  the  law  of  unfolding 
of  the  individual  spirit  of  the  pupil, —  first,  the  concrete  and 
objective,  next,  the  imaginative,  and  last,  the  philosophic  or  con- 
ceptual. This  order  of  reading  will  necessarily  coincide  with 
the  order  of  culture-history,  because,  as  I  have  undertaken  to 
show  in  a  previous  paper  on  the  "Evolution  of  Culture,"  deliv- 
ered last  December  in  San  Antonio,  the  law  of  biology  that  the 
organic  life  of  the  individual  repeats  in  miniature  the  organic 
life  of  the  race  applies  also  to  the  spiritual  life  of  the  individual 
and  the  spiritual  life  of  the  race.  Hence  if  our  Latin  reading 
follow  thus  strictly  the  psychological  development  of  the  pupil, 


ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  LATIN  HUMANITIES 


57 


we  shall  not  fail  to  be  true  at  the  same  time  to  the  historical 
development  of  Roman  civilization,  for  that  civilization,  like 
every  other,  must  inevitably  unfold  itself  first,  in  forms  of 
objective,  concrete  spiritual  activity,  next,  in  forms  of  imag- 
inative spiritual  activity,  and,  last,  in  forms  of  reflective  or 
scientific  activity.  Hence  the  order  of  Latin  reading  in  the 
rounded  humanistic  curriculum  whether  of  high  school  or  col- 
lege will  be,  first,  objective,  concrete  historical  narrative,  next, 
poetry,  and  last,  philosophy ;  which  latter  topic,  however,  might 
in  the  nature  of  the  case  sometimes  transcend  the  limits  of  the 
average  high-school  course.  It  is  unnecessary  for  my  present 
purpose  further  to  elaborate  these  principles,  more  fully  stated 
in  a  paper  delivered  last  February  in  Austin  on  the  ''Pedagogic 
Aspect  of  Culture-Evolution"  in  which  I  endeavored  to  show 
the  practical  application  of  the  San  Antonio  paper  on  the  "Evo- 
lution of  Culture." 

We  are  now  prepared  to  formulate  a  general  canon  of  reading 
for  the  four  years'  course  in  the  high  school.  As  soon  as  the 
elementary  discipline  of  the  Latin  primer  has  rendered  possible 
the  reading  of  simple,  connected  discourse,  Viri  Romce  viWS.  iwx- 
nish  a  culture-historical  course  of  Roman  biography  from  Rom- 
ulus to  Augustus.  When  the  pupil  is  sufficiently  drilled  in  this 
to  take  up  Nepos  with  ready  appreciation,  we  may  begin  on 
the  series  of  Punic  and  Roman  Lives,  Hamilcar,  Hannibal^ 
CatOy  and  Atticus,  introducing  Caesar's  Gallic  War,  that  world- 
model  of  chaste  and  simple  diction,  between  Cato  and  Atticus, 
and  after  a  substantial  drill  in  Caesar,  breaking  the  inevitable 
monotony  of  the  campaign  by  interpolating  the  remaining 
Roman  Life  of  Nepos,  Atiicus,  and  concluding  by  reviving  the 
scholastic  recollection  of  that  superb  Latinist  and  gigantic  per- 
sonality, Julius  Caesar,  By  this  time  the  average  class  may  pos- 
sibly have  reached  the  end  of  the  third  high-school  year,  and  we 
shall  have  to  begin  the  reading  of  poetry  and  the  scansion  of 
classic  verse.  The  ^neid  of  Virgil  may  now  be  appropriately 
taken  up,  and  the  fourth  year  closed  with  Cicero.  The  Catiline 
Orations   do   not    lend  themselves  aptly  for  this  purpose,  since 


58 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  HUMANITIES 


they  are  best  introduced  by  Sallust's  Conspiracy  of  Catiline,  for 
which  time  would  not  suffice.  None  but  the  simplest  of  Cice- 
ro's orations  prove  satisfactory  for  the  preparatory  class,  by 
reason  of  the  inability  of  the  pupil  to  enter  into  the  technicali- 
ties of  their  subject-matter  or  to  grasp  broadly  the  political  and 
social  conditions  that  make  them  pointed  and  instructive.  The 
De  Senectute  commends  itself  preferably  as  the  final  reading  of 
the  four-year  course,  because  of  its  more  beautiful  form  and 
content,  and  because  it  presents  a  typical  aspect  of  Roman 
philosophy,  thus  enabling  us  to  round  off  the  high-school  curri- 
culum, in  the  full  spirit  of  our  culture-historical  theory,  which,  as 
I  have  said,  conceives  all  spiritual  history  as  a  progression  from 
the  objective  and  practical,  through  the  imaginative  and  artistic, 
into  the  philosophic  and  reflective,  and  which,  therefore,  con- 
firms this  order  of  reading  as  the  true  pedagogic  procedure. 

And  throughout  the  entire  course  the  young  pupil  may  be 
led  to  penetrate  deeply  into  the  current  of  historic  life  by  col- 
lateral readings  in  standard  modern  authorities  of  history  and 
fiction.  The  blending  of  the  modern  point  of  view,  as  pre- 
sented by  some  master-hand  with  the  subject  matter  of  the 
Roman  writer,  will  furnish  him  a  just  historical  perspective,  and 
will  lead  him  to  discern  with  ever-increasing  clearness  the  unity 
of  historic  life,  and  the  sublime  trend  of  all  its  struggles,  fail- 
ures, and  successes. 

No  exact  prescription  can  be  effectually  laid  down  as  to  the 
amount  to  be  read  in  each  author ;  this  must  needs  vary  with 
class  and  instructor.  Stress  should  be  frequently  laid  both  in 
preparatory  work  and  in  college  entrance-examinations  on  sight 
translations  in  both  directions,  and,  in  general,  on  the  free  power 
of  the  pupil  to  command  his  resources  and  to  apply  them  to 
original  tasks.  Such  is  inevitably  the  true  test  of  preparation  in 
any  line,  and  such  is  the  criterion  applied  by  every  thoughtful 
examiner,  however  precisely  the  scholastic  catalogue  may  under- 
take for  rough  practical  purposes  to  gauge  quantitatively  the 
entrance-requirement.  The  thoroughness  of  the  work  is  every- 
thing ;  the  volume  of  it  quite  unimportant.     A  college  catalogue 


ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  LATIN  HUMANITIES 


59 


may  require,  for  example,  the  four  Punic  and  Roman  Lives  of 
Nepos,  four  books  of  Caesar,  and  four  orations  of  Cicero,  as  an  ade- 
quate amount  of  reading,  done  with  average  thoroughness,  to  pre- 
pare for  the  Freshman  class.  But  every  expert  instructor  knows 
that  one  of  the  Lives  of  Nepos,  one  book  of  Caesar,  and  one  ora- 
tion of  Cicero,  may  be  done  in  such  a  way  as  to  ensure  a  knowl- 
edge of  the  language  and  a  standard  of  preparation  quite  equal 
to  that  of  the  quadruple  amount  done  in  the  average  fashion. 
Hence,  the  rigid  enforcement  of  a  quantitative  requirement  might 
sometimes  imperil  the  thoroughness  of  the  preparation.  Let  us 
always  remember  that  thoroughness  is  the  sutnmum  bonum  of 
scholastic  life,  and  that  quantitative  requirements  are  entirely 
general  and  formal,  having  significance  only  where  the  time 
given  to  the  study  and  the  power  of  the  instructor  are  known 
and  constant  factors.  In  Latin  study,  as  in  the  physical  world, 
the  work  done  is  always  the  product  of  the  power  and  the  time 
through  which  it  acts ;  mere  space  may  often  act  as  a  serious 
weakener  of  concentration  and  throughness. 

Having  established  our  literary  canon  for  the  Latin  in  the 
course  of  study  for  the  high  school,  let  us  now  pass  to  the  con- 
sideration of  the  other  aspect  of  the  subject,  the  linguistic- 
logical  or  grammatical  side  of  high-school  Latin.  The  difficulty 
of  the  classic  Latin  as  a  formal  mode  of  thought-expression 
springs  out  of  its  flexional  character  and  its  consequent  freedom 
of  word-order.  While  the  English  and  all  other  languages  of 
contemporary  culture  are  almost  flexionless,  and  hence  compara- 
tively fixed  in  their  word-order,  Latin  is  richly  flexional,  and, 
therefore,  comparatively  free  in  its  collocation  of  words.  Here, 
then,  we  have  at  once  our  practical  canon  for  language  study  in 
connection  with  Latin  :  first,  the  absolute  and  realizing  mastery 
of  the  inflections ;  and,  second,  the  persistent  and  victorious 
enforcing  of  the  mind  in  every  sentence  to  lay  hold  upon  and 
strictly  follow  out  the  Latin  order  of  thought  presentation.  No 
surer  and  more  rapid  way  to  achieve  these  two  fundamental 
results  can  be  devised  than  the  method  of  nature,  speaking  Latin 
and  reading  it  aloud  with  persistent,  conscious  intellection  —  all 


6o 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  HUMANITIES 


on  the  basis,  of  course,  of  the  most  careful  reading  and  writing- 
of  the  language  by  way  of  preparation  for  the  final  linguistic 
realization.  Thus,  too,  practical  precision  in  the  sounding  of 
vowels,  diphthongs,  and  consonants,  in  the  observance  and  dis- 
tinguishing of  quantity,  in  the  mastery  of  word-accent  and 
thought-stress,  as  well  as  a  realizing  sense  of  the  force  of  flex- 
ional  forms  and  of  their  plastic  adaptability  through  change  in 
the  word-order  to  the  Protean  mood  of  thought,  will  be  most 
surely  and  rapidly  acquired. 

Approaching  now  the  narrower  pedagogic  task  of  grammat- 
ical instruction  proper,  our  fundamental  law  of  procedure  follows 
at  once  from  a  consideration  of  the  object  of  grammatical  studies. 
That  object  is  the  practical  and  theoretical  mastery  of  language. 
Hence  our  methodic  principle  of  grammar  teaching:  let  no  rule 
be  studied  apart  from  its  oral  and  written  application.  And 
in  this  connection  it  is  always  an  advantage  that  the  material  for 
such  illustration  of  grammatical  truth  be  taken  as  largely  as 
possible  from  the  subject-matter  of  the  literary  course  in  con- 
nection with  which  the  particular  grammatical  studies  happen  to 
fall  ;  for  thus  helpful  concentration  of  study,  illuminating 
inductive  suggestion,  and  that  stimulating  zest  of  effort,  which 
always  springs  from  such  intellectual  integration,  with  the  joyous 
sense  of  new  life  and  new  power  attending  it,  are  sure  to  ensue. 

It  would  be  impossible  within  the  limits  of  this  paper  to 
attempt  a  detailed  application  and  illustration  of  the  pedagogic 
principles  outlined  above,  and,  as  will  presently  appear,  the  avail- 
able published  literature  of  today  renders  such  detail  wholly 
unnecessary. 

We  may  sum  up  the  educational  sentiment  of  today  with  ref- 
erence to  classical  study  in  a  few  words.  Grammatical  instruc- 
tion should  be  rational  and  scientific,  not  descriptive  and 
memoriter.  Indeed,  every  memoriter  exercise  should  involve  a 
worthy  thought-content  and  not  consist  in  the  devouring  of 
detached  vocabularies  and  phrases.  The  inductive  process  is  a 
part  of  the  pedagogic  apparatus  of  all  rational  instruction  in 
language,  but  it  is  not  to  be  accentuated  as  an  all-excluding  fad. 


ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  LATIN  HUMANITIES 


6i 


The  pedagogic  center  of  gravity  should  lie  in  the  reading  of 
Latin  and  not  in  the  independent  grammatical  exercise,  which 
is  mainly  a  pedagogic  auxiliary,  not  an  end  in  itself.  The  ele- 
mentary Latin  reader  should  be  of  fascinating  culture-historical 
content,  legendary  or  historical,  and  not  a  medley  of  disjointed 
nothings.  '' Keiii  Sprachunterricht  ohne  Sachunterricht''  is  the  vig- 
orous formula  of  the  modern  spirit.  The  reading  of  the  Latin 
material  should  be  pursued  in  a  broad,  humanistic  spirit,  and  not 
as  a  mere  grammatical  gymnastics.  And,  finally,  the  elementary 
class  should  be  introduced  to  all  new  subject-matter,  whether 
literary  or  grammatical,  by  careful  instruction  in  the  class, 
preparatory  to  the  final  mastery  at  home  and  the  subsequent 
recitation  at  school. 

In  conclusion  I  have  only  to  consider  the  duty  of  Texas  edu- 
cators in  view  of  and  in  relation  to  the  educational  ideals  of  our 
own  country  and  to  the  best  sentiment  of  the  Old  World.  There 
are  two  educational  treatises  which  are  worth  in  themselves  to 
the  secondary  teacher  a  pedagogical  library  and  a  lifetime  of 
experience.  These  two  small  volumes  voice  the  trend  of  modern 
theory  and  practice  with  reference  to  the  practical  details  of 
Latin  pedagogy,  the  one  for  Germany,  the  world's  greatest 
nation  of  Latin  scholars,  the  other  for  the  United  States.  The 
first  is  entitled  Lehrpldne  und  Lehraufgaben  fur  die  hoheren  Schulen 
nebst  Erlduterungen  und  Ausfuhrungsbestitntnungen  (Berlin,  1892, 
Bessersche  Buchhandlung) ;  the  second,  with  which  the  Ameri- 
can teacher  is  most  directly  concerned,  is  the  Report  of  the 
Latin  Conference  in  No.  205  of  the  United  States  Bureau  of 
Education  (Washington  Government  Printing  Office,  1893),  the 
most  important  treatise  on  the  practical  pedagogy  of  secondary 
school  studies  that  has  ever  appeared  in  the  English  language. 
The  first  of  these  valuable  publications  can  be  bought  for 
seventy-five  pfennigs,  or  something  less  than  twenty  cents ;  the 
second  can  doubless  be  got  for  the  asking.  Let  no  teacher  of 
any  subject  in  the  round  of  scholastic  culture  be  without  at  least 
the  American  treatise.  Both  are  rich  in  explicit  directions  upon 
every   point   of  pedagogic  interest.      Fellow-teachers,  we   must 


62 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  HUMANITIES 


read,  mark,  learn,  and  inwardly  digest  such  publications  as  these, 
for  thus  we  shall  not  be  left  behind  in  the  march  of  educational 
progress,  and  what   is  of  great   importance,  we  shall    realize  at 
once    that    our    public    high   schools   and   all    other   secondary 
schools  in  Texas  must  respect  the  report  of  the  classical  confer- 
ence and  the  strong  protest  of  the  American  Philological  Asso- 
ciation in  the    Report  of  the   Committee  of  Twelve  and   offer   at 
the   least  a  four-years'  course  in  Latin,  with   daily  recitations  of 
the    maximum   length   possible   under   the    curriculum    and  the 
teaching   force.     We   shall  learn,  too,  the  arch-secret  of  those 
magicians   in   letters,   the   German   scholars,  when  we   come  to 
realize  the  significance  of  their  Sexta,  with  its  eight  full  hours  a 
week  of  Latin  throughout  the  scholastic  year ;  their  Quinta,  with 
the  same  allotment ;  their    Quarta,  with   seven    hours  a   week  ; 
their   Untertertia,  with  seven ;  their   Obertertia,  with  seven ;  their 
Untersecunda,  with  seven ;  their   Obersecunda,  with  seven ;    their 
Unterprima,  with  six;   and  their    Oberprima,  with   six  —  making 
the  grand  sum-total  of  sixty-two  hours   a  week  for  one  year, 
and  that,  too,  the  reformed  program  of  1892,  and  the  "revolu- 
tionary"  Emperor,  with  its  reduction  of  fifteen    hours  as   com- 
pared with   the  old  schedule.      And    we   shall    learn    finally  the 
secret  of  American  mendicancy,  when  we  compare  with  such  a 
nine-years'  curriculum,  with  an  average  of  seven  hours  a  week  of 
Latin  throughout,  its  American  counterpart,  our  high  school  and 
college  curriculum  combined,  of  about  eight  years'  length,  with 
five  recitations  a  week  in  Latin  of  forty-five  minutes  each  in  the 
high  school,  and  three  recitations  a  week  of  an  hour  each  in 
college,   making  the   puny  sum-total  of  twenty-seven  hours   a 
week  in  Latin  for  one  year  —  all  of  which  means  that  the  Ger- 
man Latinist  at  the  end  of  the  gymnasium  is,  roughly  speaking, 
If  times  better  than  the  American  Latinist  at  the  end  of  the 
college,  or  about  21^  times  as  scholarly,  and  that,  too,  without 
taking  into  account  the  expert  thoroughness  of  the  instruction 
furnished  by  the   German  gymnasium   and  the  equally  advan- 
tageous fact  that   Latin  is   taken    up  in    Germany  immediately 
after  the  three  years'    Vorschule  upon   entrance  into  the  gym- 


ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  LATIN  HUMANITIES 


63 


nasium,  whereas  in  America  it  is  usually  begun  about  five  years 
later  upon  entrance  into  the  high  school. 

It  is  a  pitiable  commentary  on  American  scholastic  humbug- 
gery  when  we  observe  that  with  our  pretentious  parade  of  twelve 
years  of  public  school  and  four  years  of  bogus  university  we  can 
find  time  for  but  four  years  of  Latin  in  the  high  school,  and  those 
puny  years  of  five  recitations  a  week  and  forty-five-minute  peri- 
ods, and  four  years  in  the  college,  and  those  still  punier  years  of 
three  recitations  a  week  and  sixty-minute  periods,  while  the 
Germans,  who  do  not  encourage  bogus  universities  and  make  no 
parade  of  high-school  and  college  "diplomas,"  and  whose  max- 
imum provision  for  primary,  secondary,  and  tertiary  educational 
processes  appears  in  a  three  years'  Vorschule  and  a  nine  years' 
gymnasium,  require  of  every  gymnasium  pupil  before  he  can 
receive  his  certificate  of  "dismissal"  about  three  times  the 
amount  of  all  the  Latin  that  our  college  graduate  could  possibly 
have  had,  even  though  "his  fondness  for  the  subject"  led  him 
to  "elect"  Latin  at  every  possible  opportunity.  Our  duty  then 
is  plain :  we  must  at  least  bring  our  Texas  schools  in  line  with 
American  ideals  as  embodied  in  the  report  of  the  Classical  Con- 
ference of  the  National  Educational  Association,  and  we  must  all 
move  forward  in  the  light  of  the  Old  World's  best  experience  as 
expressed  in  the  report  of  the  German  Commissioner,  and  no 
longer  rest  vulgarly  content  with  our  ignominious  inferiority. 
I  have  aimed  in  this  paper  to  take  our  bearings  and  to  determine 
our  immediate  course  with  reference  to  "  Latin  in  the  Course  of 
Study  for  the  High  School." 


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